


Christmas Time After Time

by PlaidAdder



Series: Wild About Harry [7]
Category: Doctor Who (2005), Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternative Timelines, Christmas, Crossover, F/F, F/M, Fix-It, Fix-It of Sorts, Inspired by A Christmas Carol, M/M, Past Abuse, Post-Canon Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-22
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-02-18 13:15:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 41,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13100928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PlaidAdder/pseuds/PlaidAdder
Summary: John's not really big on Christmas; and this year, the first after Mary's death, he's not feeling it. Everyone's away, Sherlock's on a case--alone--and Rosie's asleep. But that's all right. He's fine. He'll just have a quiet Christmas Eve by himself, drinking in front of the telly.Only out there in time and space, there's another Doctor who thinks that sounds like the saddest thing ever. And she's going to do something about it.Thirteen takes John on a whirlwind tour of Christmases past and future. The more he learns about this time travel thing, the more John starts to wonder how his current timeline became...what it is. Might these alternatives hold the key to a less miserable present, and maybe a brighter future?*****This is a fix-it for series 4 of Sherlock. I have tried to include enough information about the Doctor Who universe so that the story works even for people who don't watch the show. This is definitely a continuation of the series, but I've also tried to make it work for new readers. It was written before Season 11 of Doctor Who started, so Thirteen's companions don't appear.





	1. GHOSTING

It was fine.

It was fine that Rosie's first Christmas without Mary was going to be a quiet one. Rosie was too young to know what Christmas was, and too young to remember it after she'd grown up. John didn't remember any of his childhood Christmases, really.

John had never been big on Christmas. 

It was fine that Mrs. Hudson was in Florida, that Greg and Molly had surprised everyone by running off to Ibiza together, and that Sherlock would be out on a case tomorrow. He'd asked John to come, but you can't get a sitter on Christmas, so.

No, John thought, sipping from his whisky-and-soda. That's not it. You didn't even try. Because you knew he didn't really want you along. You've suspected it for weeks; now you know. He doesn't want you. He asks you out of habit or maybe out of guilt, not because you're still friends. He doesn't want the pain of breaking up. So he goes through the motions, but he--himself--withdraws. Checks out, as the Americans say. Ghosts you. He's ghosting you in broad daylight and now, on Christmas Eve, it's finally time to take the hint.

It was fine that John hadn't actually bought presents for Rosie. Everyone else had bought presents for Rosie. They were piled up in the living room next to the telly. He hadn't put up a tree this year. Hadn't felt like it. They never looked like the photos anyway. Tall, gangly things, their ungainly branches half-naked...must be you just couldn't grow them in England, those perfectly conical, full-branched, glistening-needled things you saw in the movies. Or maybe he just never started looking early enough. And the needles, the hassle it was trying to clean them up. 

John settled into the couch. He set his drink down on the end table. He picked it up again.

Never that big on Christmas. Sherlock wasn't either. He tried to remember whether there was a tree up at Baker Street right now. He tried to remember whether they'd ever had a tree up at Baker Street. He couldn't remember.

Why couldn't he remember?

He knocked back some more of his drink, and picked up the remote. He pressed the power button.

The remote made a noise he'd never heard before. It sounded like the wheeze of some kind of ancient automobile engine, or a dying accordion, or both.

He also noticed he was looking at the television through a strange blue haze.

Alarmed, he put down the drink and stood up. The haze cleared. Standing on the carpet, however, was a woman he'd never seen before.

She wasn't Mary. That was some relief, at least. She was blonde, and slender; but her hair was too long and too straight, framing her fine-boned face in a kind of modern pageboyish halo. And those wide-leg pants with suspenders, over the horizontal-striped top...no. Mary would never have done that. John wondered, taking it all in, why _any_ human being would have put together this particular ensemble.  

"Who are you and what are you doing here?" he demanded, one hand reaching for a gun he wasn't wearing.

"I'm the doctor," she said.

John let out a dry back of laughter. "No you're not."

The blonde woman gave a gentle sigh. Little worry lines appeared on her forehead.  "I did expect some resistance, but honestly..."

"I don't know who or what you are but 'doctor' definitely is not what comes to mind. _I'm_ the doctor. _You_ are an intruder. I repeat: what are you doing here?"

"What are _you_ doing here?" the woman demanded. "Sitting alone on Christmas Eve, drinking yourself to sleep in front of the telly? Riddle me THAT, _Doctor_ Watson!"

"Oh my God. Tell me you aren't one of those lunatics from Empty Hearse."

"Which lunatics are those?" said the intruder, as if this were a normal conversation.

"The ones who keep spamming my blog with--" John stopped. Don't go into it, he told himself. If you won't tell your friends you should definitely not tell strangers who barge into your living room in the wee hours of Christmas Eve.

"Oh...yes...now you mention it I've seen some of that. I do read your blog, or I did when you were still updating it. If you ask me, Doctor, you should just turn off the interactive function. I don't have a word for what's growing in your comments section but it's definitely not a conversation. No, I'm nothing to do with them. I'm a completely different kind of lunatic."

"So you are what, an _independent_ stalker?"

"No," said the intruder, cheerfully. "But guess again, I'm enjoying this."

"GET OUT OF THIS HOUSE!" John roared, lunging forward.

The intruder stepped back neatly, avoiding his fist. She smiled at him, and he thought he could swear he saw an actual twinkle in one of her hazel eyes. 

"Exactly what I was going to say," she answered.

"Look," John said, trying to hold back the simmering explosion. "Either you walk out that door right now, or I call the police."

She smiled, briefly.

"We got off to a bad start," she said. "I'll come in again."

She disappeared.

Oh my God, he thought. You're inventing people to argue with now. It was bad enough when it was only Mary. It was bad enough when you started arguing with Sherlock when he wasn't there. It's bad enough the things you tell Rosie while she's still too young to remember them. But this is worrying. This is bad. This is audiovisual hallucination and you are not drunk enough for this.

On the same spot, she reappeared. This time, over the braces and stripy shirt, she had thrown a long white robe, open at the front. On her head she was sporting a very tatty Santa hat. 

"No," John said, shaking his head. "No, no, no no--"

The intruder threw her arms out wide and declaimed at the top of her lungs, "I AM THE GHOST OF CHRISTMAS PAST!"

John almost choked on whatever he'd been planning to say next. "WHAT?"

The intruder smiled and made an encouraging motion toward him. "Now you say, 'Long past?' and I say, 'No! Your past!'" Her eyes narrowed a bit and that puzzled look came into her face. "Don't you know the story?"

"Of COURSE I know the story!" John shouted.

"Great man, Dickens," the intruder said. "I met him, you know. Disappointing at first but turned out to be a good man in a tight corner. Now. If I say I'm a timelord, we're going to need a long tiresome conversation about what's a timelord and where's Gallifrey and is there really sentient life on other planets and why am I still calling myself a timelord when I'm clearly not a lord, well, I will answer that one, it's because I hate the word _lady_. Where were we? Oh. Yes. Did you know that every December 25, the Earth passes through a kind of wiggle in the space-time continuum that opens up a kind of a codicil in the laws of time, and allows us to cut a few capers that would normally be prohibited?"

"Where's my bloody mobile," John muttered, turning away and looking through the couch cushions. Had he left it in Rosie's room? Damn him anyway for talking Mary out of keeping the land line.

"I'll take that as a no," said the intruder. "Well anyhow, it does, and let me tell you, I have spent some pretty wild Christmases on your planet, but that's neither here nor there at the moment. Tell me, Doctor Watson, what did you get for Christmas when you were five years old?"

John opened his mouth, shook his head, tried to remember in spite of himself, couldn't, felt a bit weird about that, shrugged.

"Don't remember," he said. "Doesn't matter."

"I'll try again," the intruder replied. "Are you an only child?"

John stopped moving. He stopped talking. He was attempting to remember. He thought about saying yes. He thought about saying no. He couldn't tell which was the right answer. He became terrified.

"You don't know, do you?" the intruder said. Her face seemed kind, lunatic as it was, and he found himself trusting it, mad as that had to be.

"No," John whispered, hoarsely. 

"It's midnight on Christmas Eve, or if you prefer, Christmas morning," said the intruder. "And suddenly, all the alternatives are all around us. Everything that ever happened, is happening. All the timelines are true. So this Christmas is rotten. There's a million other Christmases out there, and tonight, we're going to visit them all."

John felt suddenly very unsteady on his feet. He rocked forward, flailing his arms, grabbing with one hand onto the intruder's robe. The floor changed. The walls rushed backward. A column of glass and pulsing light sprouted from the middle of the room. Everything shook and shuddered. 

"Next stop, early childhood!" he heard the intruder's voice shouting. "GERONIMOOOOOOOO!!!"

END CHAPTER

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since a couple readers have mentioned that they found the shifting timelines confusing: At the end of each chapter there will be a note explaining which alternative they're visiting. If you would like the hint, you can scroll down and get it; if you don't want to be spoiled, I have tried to make sure you can get it from context.


	2. COVENTRY CAROL

There were hundreds of living rooms exactly like this one all over the island, John thought. But this particular iteration of it had been carved into some part of his mind that he hadn't visited in years. As his eyes took in each detail, some ancient glyph blazed back to life, as fire traced forgotten and magical contours through the dark caverns of memory. The white shag carpeting, worn in places but still miraculously clean. The avocado-green sofa with its curled arms, its cushions dented and dimpled despite all of his mother's efforts. The leather, brass-studded armchair which smelled so inviting but which was his father's and was never to be climbed on, sat in, or touched by the children. The Christmas tree at one end of the rectangle, near the largest of the windows, strung with those large, opaque, flame-shaped bulbs that glowed like jewels, each burning inside its own glistening dark-green hollow. You couldn't find them now, the _big_ lights, each just the right size to fit in the palm of a young child's hand. They worked on him magnetically now as they had long ago. There was one on a low branch, a brilliant cobalt blue, beaming at him like a magic crystal. He could hear his mother's voice:  _Don't touch, Johnny. Hot!_

And there she was. Mum.

A sudden conflagration. He stared at her, aching--at the wool of the cherry-colored sleeveless dress she wore over the white turtleneck, at her golden hair, puffed up in a bouffant that must have gone out of style years ago. Kneeling before the tree, carefully placing the wrapped parcels beneath it, she looked too young to be his mother--too young to be anyone's mother, too young to be married. The skirt of that dress--he could remember pressing his face up against it, breathing in the woolly smell--ended a bit above the knee. It was all already in him, leaping back to life now: her white tights, her patent leather pumps, the broad holly-green belt she wore around her waist. And her face. All this time he could only recall what it looked like in the last years--puffy and sagging, disfigured by the pathetic lipstick and eye shadow she insisted on wearing even after she'd been diagnosed with congestive heart failure. His heart twisted as he looked at the same lipstick, the same eye shadow, the same makeup confidently applied to her smooth young skin. No wonder she wouldn't give it up, he thought. She thought it was what made her beautiful, just because she was beautiful when she first wore it.

His Mum stood up, put her hands on her hips, surveyed the semicircle of gifts around the tree. She took a deep breath, then reached in the pocket of her cherry-red dress and pulled out a pack of cigarettes.

"Oh Mum," John cried out. "Don't, Mum, the risk of heart disease--"

"She can't hear you," said that irritating voice behind him.

The Doctor, as she insisted on being called, was still wearing that white fur-trimmed robe, but the hat had somehow vanished in the scuffle. The Doctor had in fact explained to him that due to something called Multiphasal Simultaneity, it was possible to cross your own timeline without destroying the universe as long as you did it under conditions that prevented you from interacting with it. John had no idea why this was necessary but he found it difficult to suppress the tears that came as he realized he would not be able to touch his mother. As he realized how long he had been aching to do it. Just wrap his arms round her legs and hide his face in her skirts, as he used to do when he was tiny. 

"It wouldn't matter," John replied, because it was some relief to talk to someone. "From the day I entered medical school I was after her to quit smoking. She never listened."

"It's a funny thing about the future," said the Doctor, a bit wistfully. "You all know it exists. You watch the conversion: tomorrow to today to yesterday. Over and over. And yet none of you really believe in it until you're actually living there and by then, it's usually too late to do anything about it."

His mother finished her cigarette and put out the butt in a crystal ashtray sitting one of of the two matching end tables that framed the sofa. She turned toward the door to the front hallway. A smile of joyful anticipation transfigured her in an instant. 

"Johnny! Harry!" she sang out, lingering on the vowels in that barely-softened Manchester accent. "It looks as if Father Christmas has been here!"

There was an explosion of noise from the staircase out in the hall. Thundering down the steps and through the doorway was a stocky little boy in plaid flannel pajamas, followed closely by a taller, narrower, brown-haired child. The boy charged across the room, barely glancing at his mother, and launched himself onto the rug near the pile of wrapped gifts. The older child hung back until he'd reached them, then sprinted the remaining few feet and threw herself down at the other side of the pile. 

John watched himself pick up and shake an oblong parcel. He'd forgotten his hair was ever that curly, or that blonde. He remembered--suddenly, sharply--the longing, the desperate intensity in those round childish eyes. How long-anticipated this moment always was. How anxious the hope that the wished-for object might appear, magically, from beneath the paper.

A crackle from the other side of the tree drew the little boy's attention. "Mum! Harry's starting! It's not fair!"

"Stop that, Harry," his mother said, sharply. "Wait for your father."

"But--" said the dark-haired child.

"Look at Johnny," said their mother. "Don't you see how nicely he's waiting? And you two and a half years older."

John whispered, "Harry."

Short for Harriet, a name she'd begun to hate the instant she'd learned it. Wearing a candy-striped pink and white bathrobe with white eyelet trim round the collar and cuffs. Mousy brown hair in what the unisex salons of the day were charitably calling a "pixie" cut. It was a cut that probably would have worked better with straight hair. 

"Do you remember her?" asked the Doctor.

John shook his head slowly.

"No?"

"No, I--" He tried to understand it before he said it. "It's like, I remember everything, but only _after_ it happens."

He looked back at the Doctor. She seemed to understand it.

"Why is that?" he asked.

The Doctor took a deep breath. 

"You and your sister there," said the Doctor. "Your timelines will eventually...diverge. Quite a bit actually. Well. In point of fact, Doctor Watson, in your current timeline at the point where I entered it just now, your sister doesn't exist, as such."

"As such," John repeated, warily.

 

The Doctor sighed.

"You see," she said, "your timeline is unusually fragile and complex and once or twice I may have...well, the point is, we're visiting one of your alternative timelines at a point where it's largely coincident with your current one. Some of what you see you've always remembered, because it's part of your current timeline. Some of it you're only remembering now, because you--I mean this you, the your-current-timeline-you--are only just now seeing it happen."

John was about to argue, but then he heard a voice from the entrance to the living room. 

"Lights! Camera! Action!"

Dad. It was Dad. So tall. Such dark wavy hair, parted and cut the way any barber from 1935 to 1955 could have done it. Such a square jaw. Much of his face was whited-out by the enormous lamp attached to the super-8 film camera he held up in one hand. The whirring of the camera acted on John like the ringing of a Pavlovian bell. He started involuntarily, half-reaching for the figure in the doorway. 

"Daddy! Daddy!"

Both children leapt up and charged their father, slamming into him and wrapping their arms around him. He put his free hand on the top of the boy's head, then the girl's, ruffling each child's hair with the exact same movements and filming all the while. He allowed the boy to lead him, chanting _Daddy, Daddy_ all the way, over to his leather armchair. Seated there, enthroned, he trained the camera methodically on the tree, the pile of gifts, and his young and beautiful wife, standing in front of the fireplace with her hands clasped in front of her cherry-red skirt, waiting for his signal.

"You may open your presents..." the father said, teasing them with an overly dramatic pause. "NOW!"

The little boy tore into his pile with a feeling that was coming back to John with an almost terrifying pang--something on the edge between eagerness and desperation. Had he really told this woman that he didn't remember what he got for Christmas when he was five years old? How could he have forgotten? How much he had wanted that Playmobil operating room set, with its folding plastic screen and its chunky gray machines and crash carts and those weirdly stylized green operating gowns, as shiny and magical as Superman's cape. How fast his heart pounded when he saw that one and only one parcel that was the right size and shape of the all-important cardboard box in which that operating room set came. With what unexpected joy he ripped away the paper and then--saw--

John watched his five-year-old self burst into tears.

"What's the matter, Johnny?"

That was his mum. She dropped to her knees next to her son, whose blonde curls quivered as his head bent over the box. On the front of it was a photo of tiny soldiers, all dressed in British uniforms from the Second World War, surrounding a model tank. John closed his eyes. He could remember staring at the Airfix logo, as one large tear rolled off the end of his nose and splashed down on it.

John's five-year-old self shook his head. He wouldn't say; of course he wouldn't say. How can a child explain, to anyone not a child, the terrifying joy of anticipation and the corresponding agony of disappointment? How could any adult wish for a mere--thing--an ordinary--object--the way a child did? Adults were immune to the magic of things. They couldn't understand.

The whirring stopped. Their father had put down his camera. John could see his father's eyebrows drawing down, his father's mustache bristling. 

"Stop crying, John."

"Henry, please," his mother said, softly but firmly. "Johnny, what is it? Tell Mummy what's wrong."

"John H. Watson!" his father barked. "Stop crying! It's ungrateful and it's disgusting."

John turned around to face the Doctor.

"Stop this," he said.

"I can't stop it, Doctor Watson. This is what happens in this timeline. This is what happens in _all_ of the timelines, as a matter of--"

"Then take me home. I don't want this. If I wanted to remember it I would have. Why are you doing this to me?" he demanded, his voice breaking. 

He saw the Doctor looking over John's shoulder. She did look concerned.

John didn't turn around. He didn't need to or want to. He could hear them all: his father pronouncing sentence, his mother tearfully interceding-- _it's Christmas day, Henry, don't send him to his room--_ and Harry, ignored and unheard, repeating, "He didn't ask for that. He didn't ask for that. He--would you LISTEN?"

"Is this supposed to make me feel  _better?"_ John shouted.

The hiss of flame behind him made him turn around. His father had taken the film reel out of the camera and thrown it onto the fire. Harry shrieked. His mother didn't. His mother was sad and anxious and upset, but she wasn't surprised. It was as if she had expected it.

After his mother died John had gone through the attic of this very house and found an old shoebox with three reels of super-8 film, all labeled with different years, all labeled December 25. He had wondered at the time where all the others were. That whirring camera sound was part of every childhood Christmas he could remember.

"Wait," said the Doctor.

The lights went out.

They were in his old bedroom. His five-year-old self was lying prone on the coverlet of his big-boy bed. His face was turned toward the window. His eyes were closed, his chest rising and falling peacefully. The muted sounds of his mother and father's voices drifted up from below.

The door opened. Harry tiptoed up to the head of the bed. 

"Psst. Johnny. Johnny, wake up."

The little boy opened his eyes. He blinked. The tear tracks were still visible on his face.

"Harry?" The little boy sat up in bed. "Harry, you can't! You'll be in trouble!"

Harry's little eyebrows drew downward and her mouth became a thin line. She really did look like Dad, a bit, at that moment.

"Too late," she said. "I'm in Coventry too."

"No! Why?"

"Why do you _think_ , Johnny?" Harry hissed. 

"Did you--"

"Hush. Listen. Dad didn't let me give you my present. It's in my room. Come see."

John tried to remember what the present was. He couldn't. He could only remember the sight of Harry's face in the dark, the excitement of the secret, the shiver he felt when she whispered the word _present_.

They slipped out of his bedroom like a pair of spies infiltrating an enemy compound. Harry looked left and right for Suspicious Characters before opening the door to her bedroom. Once inside, she shut the door behind them...almost noiselessly. Then she reached up to her night stand, took down a pocket torch, and lit it up.

"Merry Christmas!" she whispered, as the beam of light struck the cardboard structure in the center of the room.

John's throat constricted. His nostrils itched. He couldn't separate the clashing feelings assailing him--a child's amazement at this miraculous manifestation, an adult's sorrowful recognition of its pathetic inadequacy. The sheet of corrugated cardboard, ripped from the bottom of a packing box, folded accordion-style and standing on its side, as a screen. The empty matchbox, opened a bit so that the "patient's" head--she had glued a ping-pong ball to a wine cork, then drawn eyes and a mouth and hair on it in brown marker--stuck out of the opening. A jagged-edged square of mint green fabric had been draped over the matchbox operating table and its ping-pong patient. Grouped around the bed were the three magi from the creche that sat out every Christmas in the center of the dining room table. Each was wrapped in another square of that same fabric, with the same zigzag cut at the edges. Pinking shears, came the information from somewhere. Because their mother had given Harry a sewing kit that Christmas. Each sported a tiny surgical mask--or rather, a shred of green fabric that had been wrapped around his mouth and tied. Melchior's was already creeping downwards, and now rested about mid-beard. For some reason, down at the foot of the operating table, Harry had placed one of the molded resin sheep.

The little boy reached out, taking one of the magi in each hand. John glanced back at Harry's bed. He could just make out an irregular white shape at the head of it that was probably her pillow. He remembered, suddenly, that their mother had bought them both mint-green sheets at a sale earlier that fall.

Oh Harry.

He heard his five year old self laugh.

John couldn't see the cardboard or the figurines any more. He could only see the back of his plaid flannel pajamas and of Harry's candy-striped robe, the torchlight caught in the blonde curls of the little boy and the slightly darker waves of the little girl's hair as they whispered together, moving the figurines around. He could catch some of the whispered words.  _Scalpel. Anaesthetic. Nurse. Vitals._

"Well," said the Doctor brightly. "Time we were going!"

John turned around. He didn't want to ask if he could stay longer, so he didn't.

"Clear!" shouted the little boy. The matchbox went flying. The cardboard screen toppled. Both children burst out laughing.

"Let's go," John murmured. "Let's go now. Please."

"As you wish," said the Doctor.

END CHAPTER

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This memory could belong to any of John's timelines, because it happens in all of them.


	3. IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE

"I have no memory of this place," John said, as he and the Doctor trudged up the seemingly endless walkway toward the McMansion at the top of the snow-covered hill. "And whoever would live in this monstrosity, I don't want to meet them."

"You said you wanted to see a happy Christmas."

"Did you have to go all the way to Norwood for it?"

"Yes," said the Doctor.

The night seemed, to John, unnaturally dark; they were far from anything worthy of the title of 'road.' Here and there through the leafless trees he could see the glowing windows of some of the other houses in the Old Acres development. They were few and far away, the cooling stars on the edge of a sprawling galaxy.

And then, with a click, the path was flooded in bright and brutal light. It came from a pair of floodlights mounted atop the poorly-proportioned front door to the house. In their light, he could see two dark figures ahead of them, approaching the door, with long and narrow shadows stretching out behind them. He and the Doctor, he noticed, cast no shadows. Now that he thought about it, he wasn't cold either, though he was still in the clothes he'd been wearing back in the house--a singlet, track pants, and socks. 

Well. It was a dream. Of course it was a dream. Just as well, too, because he'd started to wonder about what would happen if Rosie woke up in his 'current timeline' and he wasn't there.

It was hard to make out who the two figures on the doorstep were. Both were wrapped in gigantic down jackets with enormous hoods. The green jacket on the right he thought he might recognize. It looked, actually, almost the same shade and shape as the one he'd been wearing down at the pool's edge, the day that Moriarty...

The red jacket on the left reached out to press the doorbell. The door opened. 

The woman who answered it was stunning. Absolutely stunning, from the magnificent waves of golden hair to the shining golden leather of the stilettos on her feet. She wore a golden sheath dress with a low, softly draped neckline. Yellow diamonds glittered in her ears. For a moment, she also wore an bright-red, enigmatic smile. Then she let out a squeal of greeting and thrust out her arms toward the red parka, which emitted an answering shriek.

"Mary!" 

"Clara!"

The golden woman stepped back. The bejacketed couple walked in and began knocking the snow from their boots. The jackets came off. Yes, the green jacket, that was him--the John of perhaps ten years ago, perhaps a bit more. And the red jacket...

He looked at the doctor for confirmation.

"Is that..."

"Yes," said the Doctor.

It was Mary--the same features, the same compact and strong body, the same ironic lift of the eyebrows, the same half-secret smile. But she was young--younger than John had ever seen her. Her hair was a sort of oak-brown shade, her face rounder and fuller. She wore tiny silver studs in her ears and one large, lustrous white pearl on a silver chain around her neck. No other jewelry. She wore a black sleeveless cocktail dress with a thread hanging from the hem, and black leather pumps with heels that had been recently polished. What is the matter with me that I can even perceive that? John thought. Years of Sherlock, not to be sloughed off lightly. Even in a dream, even with a dream Mary.

"Come in, come in," said the golden woman, leading the young John and the young Mary down a Persian-carpeted hallway. "There's wine and cheese in the living room. Harry's in the kitchen, of course, but I'll coax her out of it in a moment. Sit, have a drink, relax. Poor Mary, were exams  _very_ bad this term?"

Mary laughed as she sank gratefully into a reupholstered Chesterfield and its mound of tasseled throw pillows. "Is it that obvious?"

"Oh Mary," Clara said, with a silvery little laugh of protest. "Not at all, you look lovely, fresh and in the absolute pink. Doesn't she, John?"

The young John's smile looked a little tight, but he said, "Yes. I wilt under pressure, as you know, but Mary, ah, Mary...she's the last rose of summer, left blooming alone--"

Mary gave him a playful thump on the shoulder. The young John laughed and thumped her back, lightly. 

"Exams _were_ a bit rough," young John acknowledged. "But between my canine tenacity and Mary's natural brilliance, we managed to pull through."

While Clara went to the bottle of wine on the sideboard, young John and Mary snuggled deeper into the pillows. John looked at their interlaced hands and tried to put his finger on what was different about Mary. She seemed to move more easily, somehow--to be quicker, more lively. Well, of course, she was younger. And there had as yet obviously been no Revelations.

Clara poured them each a glass of red while they gazed into each other's eyes. John's own eyes were beginning to sting a bit.

"This is medical school," John said, to the Doctor. "I never knew Mary in medical school. I didn't meet her until after--"

"Yes, Doctor Watson," said the Doctor impatiently. "As I believe I have mentioned, this is an _alternative_ timeline. You asked for a happy Christmas. I found you the happiest one available. In this timeline, you and Mary meet as medical students."

Clara came back to hand a glass to each of them. Clara disappeared through the hall entrance. Young John and Mary clinked glasses, said "Cheers," nuzzled noses for a moment, and drank.

The younger him looked so happy. And John himself began to feel it. The blessed peace of knowing that the search was over. That he'd found The One, and that she loved him as much as he loved her. That even after two years of medical school--of little to no sleep, of cramming at all hours and bad food and anxiously scanning one's answers before anxiously turning the paper in and lipids and ganglia and everything else--seeing her made it all go away. That after all, despite everything, he hadn't been cruel to her, hadn't made her push him away or leave him for good. That those beautiful eyes, that open face, that wicked little smile, they were all real and they were all her and they were all shining with love for him. 

Happiness. As yet unpoisoned. 

"And when does she leave medicine for the lucrative field of murder for hire?" John inquired, bitterly.

Young John and Mary turned their heads toward the doorway. Clara, shining in the light from a dozen antique brass sconces on the living room walls, sashayed back into the room, leading Harry behind her with one gold-nailed hand. 

Though his memories of Harry were so recent, it did somehow startle John to see her wearing a dress.

Harry was not, John couldn't help noting, wearing it particularly well. It was black and beaded drop-waisted; but the flapper silhouette, which had the effect of making other women look slim and boyish, seemed to thicken Harry's torso, and the pleated hem seemed hit at exactly the wrong place. She wore no makeup, and sported a kind of vaguely androgynous moptop. But she was gazing at Clara as if Clara were the angel on the top of the Christmas tree, with a light in her eyes that was almost capable of transfiguring this awkward ensemble.

"Merry Christmas," Harry said, running her free hand through her hair. Which she should not have done, because there was still flour on it.

"Merry Christmas, Harry," sang Mary, standing up and rushing to embrace her. Young John had to struggle a bit longer to free himself from the Chesterfield, but the awkward little hug he gave Harry appeared sincere enough. Clara crossed back to the bottle and filled another wineglass with red. John found his throat constricting. Somehow the sight of the full wineglass in Clara's hand made him feel anxious, even a little nauseous.

"Is it all right?" Harry said, facing young John and Mary. "The strife is o'er, the battle done, and all that?"

Mary held out her glass; young John clinked his against hers. "We live to fight again," he said. 

"Congratulations," Harry answered. "I want to hear all about it in a minute but I have to get back to the soup. Dinner's in fifteen minutes. Mary? You hear me? Synchronize our watches, and at fifteen minutes, no matter how fast Clara's talking, I want you to move everyone toward the dining room, understood?"

Mary gave her a mock salute. "Yes, sir."

"Carry on, Colonel Morstan. I know I may rely on you." 

And Harry walked away. From the wine bottle and from the glass of wine in Clara's hand, which Clara now began sipping herself. 

John turned to the Doctor, who was watching Harry leave, and looking inexplicably wistful.

"In this timeline," John said. "She's gotten sober?"

He didn't know how he knew to ask that question; but he knew.

The Doctor gave her head a little shake as she snapped out of her reverie. "Well yes and no. In this timeline--"

"In this timeline, Harry's not an alcoholic?" Somehow, that was the one thing he seemed most certain of remembering about her.

"Harry most certainly _is_ an alcoholic, but she doesn't drink. In this timeline, she never has."

"I don't understand," said John. 

"She looked at your father and she looked at your mother and she said to herself, it is not worth the gamble. In this timeline, Doctor Watson, Harry never took that first drink. She doesn't know what it would do to her and she'll never find out."

John turned his attention back to his younger self and Mary. They were listening to Clara talk about the room they sat in, the extras Clara has insisted on, the marble chimney piece and the bay window and the built-in shelving. Between his younger self and Mary there was a kind of invisible current--of desire given and answered, but also a kind of secretly shared joke. All of this mattered to Clara; mattered, judging by how close to passion Clara edged when discussing the custom moldings on the ceiling, rather a lot. Young John and Mary knew that such things would never matter to them. Mary wanted to end maternal mortality in Britain. Young John merely wanted to be a good general practitioner for underserved working families. Cut-glass fixtures and window treatments would matter not at all to them. They were healers. They would preserve parents for their children. They would make a world with fewer orphans.

"It won't last," John murmured, almost involuntarily.

"I'm sorry, what?" said the Doctor.

"All of this..." John gestured after Clara, who was leaving the room again in answer to an impatient offstage summons from Harry. Young John and Mary stood up too, but Clara waved them off as she left. They drifted toward the window seat, looking out at the snow, and then at the stars in each other's eyes.

"I didn't know Mary wanted to be a doctor," John said. "How do you get from 'first do no harm' to 'first make sure there are no surviving witnesses?'"

The Doctor sighed.

"I repeat," said the Doctor. "This is an  _alternative timeline._ This woman is not an assassin. Mary Morstan is her real name. She is in fact an orphan--mother died in childbirth--which I believe largely explains her choice of specialty and may partly explain her choice of partner. She is in fact rather brilliant when it comes to human biology. She becomes a very good obstetrician and a highly-sought after gynecologist."

John looked over at the window seat. As Mary laughed softly at something Young John had said, John finally put his finger on what was different about her. With the Mary of his current timeline, he realized...there were the same expressions, the same motions, the same laughter and smiles. But everything was on a kind of tape delay. Every word, every expression, every action was preceded by a fraction of a second of hesitation. Like a hitch in the stream. Buffering.

And that was absent from this Mary, who had now turned her attention to the living room now, regarding it with a kind of openly horrified gaze.

"How many of those little nutcracker figurines do you think Clara owns?" Mary whispered mischieviously.

Young John shook his head. "Dozens. Perhaps hundreds."

"Has she got boxes of them in the garage, do you think?"

"Absolutely."

"Why on earth--"

"Clara collects things. Harry says at least it's miniatures and not houses."

"Houses?" Mary breathed, scandalized.

"Every six months when the trust payment comes in Clara makes noises about going into London real estate. It'll never happen. Harry does all the investing, and she's strictly index funds." 

"Good for Harry," Mary muttered, as Clara returned. Harry followed, her hands clean this time. She and Clara perched on an antique Queen Anne loveseat across from the bay window.

"Well come on," Harry said. "Show us."

Mary extended her left hand. On the fourth finger glittered a large yellow diamond.

Clara burst out with a shriek in which, John thought, he could detect some sincere excitement. Clara took Mary's hand and turned it this way and that, watching the diamond catch the light.

"Congratulations!" Clara shouted, crossing to the bay window for a hug from Mary. "Oh the stone suits you, darling, it really does. I don't mind a bit, do I, Harry?"

Clara looked back at Harry with a smile. Harry didn't smile back.

"It's what Mum would have wanted," she said. "Congratulations, John, I wish you both every happiness."

Clara knelt down on the Persian rug at Mary's feet, still toying with Mary's ring hand. "Tell me everything! Do you have a date? Do you have a venue? Do you need any favors called in, because I know _everyone_ \--"

Mary shook her head, gently removing her fingers from Clara's hand. "It's all decided. We're getting married this summer, in Provence."

Clara's delight was uncontainable. Harry's was less noisy, but she seemed pleased to hear it. 

"A destination wedding!" Clara breathed. "Oh Harry. Can we have one?"

"Alas, the laws of England won't allow it," Harry said. 

Briefly, Clara allowed herself to look annoyed, perhaps a little hurt. "If you need anything--you know--financially--"

"Oh that's _so_ kind of you, Clara," Mary jumped in. "I do appreciate it. But I've done the math, and I think we can just cover it in cash if I sell most of the pearls."

Harry nodded. Clara nodded too, but with a bit of a pout. "Oh but must you? They're so beautiful. I've never seen anything like them."

Clara reached out and touched the pearl at Mary's throat with one gilded fingertip. Mary, John noticed, locked eyes at that moment with Harry. Between them, too, something unspoken seemed to pass. Mary drew back slightly, and Clara's hand dropped.

"I don't much care for jewelry, Clara," Mary said. "Oh, except for this, of course."

Mary waved her left hand at young John. Young John impulsively took Mary by the shoulders and kissed her. The kiss went on. Harry averted her eyes. Clara didn't.

Finally deciding that watching was more painful than not watching, John turned back toward the Doctor. 

"What pearls is she talking about?"

The Doctor waved a hand. "About eight years after her father's disappearance, Mary received that pearl--the one she's wearing--in the post, from an anonymous sender. For six months she received another pearl exactly like it on the fifteenth of the month. Then it all stopped."

John couldn't believe it. "Her father's disappearance? What happened to him?"

The Doctor shrugged. "Unresolved. The case is still technically open, in this timeline. No body was found. They were never able to trace him. it's one of the things that brought you two together actually. The mystery of the missing father."

"But--the pearls--whoever sent them, surely, had some connection to--"

"Perhaps, Doctor Watson; but they never discovered where the pearls came from. Mary got a rather strange letter, a month after the last pearl came. She never responded to it. She talked to--well--to you about it, and you agreed it was safer not to pursue it. Whatever her father was mixed up in, Mary doesn't want any part of it and neither do you."

"What about Sherlock?" John blurted out.

"What about him?"

"He--" John stopped himself. But he couldn't imagine Sherlock just letting this go. He would certainly have pursued this clue, no matter how dangerous it was. He'd have found Mary's father or found out what happened to him or possibly died in the attempt but honestly, John thought, I can see his point of view. How can they just go on _not knowing_? 

Aha.

"So I suppose, in _this_ timeline," John said, "I haven't met Sherlock yet."

The Doctor seemed pleased by the deduction. "Excellent, Doctor Watson!"

John and the Doctor had somehow, without John noticing it, left the house. They were  at the bottom of a little slope, looking up at the house, and at the two figures standing inside the glassed-in sun porch that extended from the dining room. It was Young John and Harry, standing on the other side of the glass, looking out toward them. Despite the distance and the transparent barrier, John could hear them talking. 

"I'm truly happy for you," Harry said, though it struck John that though she said it sincerely she also said it without joy. "Mary's brilliant, John, I mean in all the ways. She is honestly the kindest, most honest, most loyal friend I have. You could not have done better."

Young John's eyes appeared to mist over a bit. "Thanks, Harry. I--it means a lot to me that you're happy for me."

Harry patted John on the shoulder, kindly if a bit awkwardly. Then she said, conversationally, "Treat her well or I'll skin you."

Young John laughed. "She'd beat you to it," he answered.

Harry finally smiled. "Of course she would."

They stood in silence for a moment. Young John took a deep breath, then turned to face Harry.

"Harry, are you..." Young John waved a hand at the house around them. "The house, the grounds, it's all very...I mean...it's lovely, and all that, but..."

"But?" Harry said, not exactly invitingly.

"I just--I--don't take this the wrong way--"

"I'm doubtful there's a right way, but go on ahead and say it, John."

"I don't see a lot of--of-- _you_ \--in all this."

Harry looked back at him, impassive.

"I haven't shown you the library yet," she said. 

"No, but Clara has."

Harry's lips curved in a slightly hardened smile.

"And--well--all right, but--in all this--one room?"

Young John was surprised to see tears come to Harry's eyes. John himself found it distressing.

"I never thought about it before," Harry said. "But you're right. I've limited myself to one room. It's--all I thought I could ask for, I suppose. All I'm used to having."

Her face crumpled. The tears began to fall. Young John became alarmed.

"Harry, I'm sorry--I--I feel too rude to live right now, honestly, Mary's right about me--"

"No." Harry put a hand over her mouth, took a moment to stop the quivering, and then dropped it. "Don't apologize. We've always tried to be honest with each other. I really value that. I hope that won't change after you're married."

"Well," Young John said, gamely. "I'm told it changes everything, but I'm hoping we'll beat the odds."

Harry laughed, softly. John echoed it, sheepishly.

"Well look at you," Harry said, reaching out impulsively to ruffle his hair. "Little Johnny in love. Thank God for that."

"Thank God," young John repeated, emphatically. "We made out all right, didn't we? You and me. Despite..."

"Despite," Harry said. "Yes. True love, at last. For both of us. A true Christmas miracle."

True love. With a real Mary. Mary as she was meant to be. Mary as he had truly believed she was.

"Doctor," said John, urgently.

"Yes, Doctor Watson?" said the woman's voice, now irritatingly cheerful.

"When do I meet Sherlock?"

"I beg your pardon?" chirped the Doctor's voice.

"In this timeline. When do I meet Sherlock?"

"Oh, you never meet Sherlock."

John spun around. The Doctor was almost blending into the snow, her white robe trailing in the drifts. He found himself enraged by the sight of her clear eyes and her enigmatic half-smile.

" _What_?" John demanded.

"Well think about it, Doctor Watson," she retorted. "Sherlock Holmes is a misanthropic basket case practicing the science of deduction from a flat in Baker Street, which he hardly ever leaves except when Greg Lestrade drags him out of it to look at a newly-discovered corpse. You're about to marry Mary and move to the middle of Liverpool. For the next ten years it's pretty much work, sleep, work, sleep, and then Mary has a son, and after that, my goodness, I don't know how either of you carries on but somehow you--"

"But--I--I _never_ meet Sherlock?"

"Not in this timeline."

John felt perilously close to hyperventilating. "I must _hear_ of him? I must read the papers?"

"He's not _in_ the papers, Doctor Watson," the Doctor said, now beginning to show her frustration. "No one reads his blog except for Jim Moriarty. You live and die without ever knowing he exists."

"I _die_?"

The Doctor made a noise of dismissal. "Oh, decades from now, after three children and several hospitals. Heart attack, in your sleep. Happiest way to go. Mary survives you by six months. Car crash for her, I'm afraid, grief makes people distracted and really after her seventieth birthday they should have taken her keys anyhow, your eldest Henry tried, but--"

"What about Greg, do I meet him?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Greg works in homicide and serious crimes. You have nothing to do with homicide and serious crimes. At any rate in ten years he's promoted to super and after that he's pretty much just in his office eating sandwiches with his feet on the desk."

"And Molly?"

"In this timeline, Molly becomes an English major. She writes a slim volume of poetry which has a succes d'estime and then goes off on a tour of Europe and the subcontinent during which she becomes a moderately successful travel blogger. Her book deal is modest but it sets her up for a middling career as a writer of popular nonfiction. In fact, she writes a children's book about the human body which--"

"What about Sherlock?" John broke in, desperately. "Does he die?"

"Everyone dies, Doctor Watson."

"HOW does he die?" John roared.

"Poison," said the Doctor.

John's blood, which had been running very hot for the last little while, suddenly went cold.

"Oh my God," John whispered. "It was the wrong pill. He chose the wrong pill. I knew it, I KNEW it, that--arrogant pigheaded PRICK--"

"There was no right pill," said the Doctor, gesticulating wildly and rather comically with her flowing sleeves. "They were BOTH poisoned, a child could work that out. It was suicide by cop--well--by private detective, anyway, and--"

"Take me home," John said, with some difficulty because now he actually was hyperventilating. "If this is happy I don't want it. I don't want this timeline. I don't want to live here."

The Doctor looked at him with that puzzled expression again.

"You don't seem to understand, Doctor Watson," she said. "This is not a choice that you are able to make. This is an _alternative_ timeline. It no longer exists, except on Christmas. We're not putting on _Brigadoon_ here.  When our Christmas Caroling jaunt is over, you're going back to your current timeline. I'm sorry if I didn't make that clear to you."

"Well then what ARE you doing?" John cried. "If I can't have any of this then what is the point of showing it to me?"

"You just said you didn't want it!" the Doctor shouted back. "Make up your mind! DO you want this?"

"I--no!"

"Why not?"

"Because--" John felt as if everything beneath his skin was one seething mass of anguish. "Because it's BORING!"

"It's not boring, John, you have true love and three wonderful children and a very fulfilling career--"

True love. With the real Mary. With his Mary, the Mary he'd fallen in love with, the Mary he'd thought had never in fact existed. She did exist. In this timeline. On Christmas Day.

"Is there another timeline," John gasped. "Is there another timeline, with--with that Mary--the doctor Mary--the Mary who--who is--who Harry says she is--and--and I still meet Sherlock?"

The Doctor compressed her lips, lowered her brows, and nodded, unwillingly. 

"Take me there."

"You're not going to like it," she warned. 

"I DON'T CARE!"

"All right," said the Doctor, with a wave of her hand. "We're going. Only Don't Blame Me."

END CHAPTER

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This timeline represents an alternative version of John's life in which everyone always made the safe decision. It's not consistent with any of the timelines established in the earlier stories in the "Wild About Harry" series.


	4. THE MISSING THREE-QUARTERS

"Wait a minute," John said. "I think I do remember this. I mean remember remember."

Nondescript as it was, the beige-carpeted living room in which he and the Doctor stood was emerging from the depths of his memory. The mismatched cheap furniture, the nicked and scarred square coffee table--a Pottery Barn specimen if there ever was one--and the Christmas tree skulking in the corner next to the entertainment console, holding its sickly head up with a kind of defiant pride. All the ornaments on it were new. Shiny round red and green glass balls, sold by the dozen at Boots at this time of year. Sad tinsel icicles. An angel on the top which had been drawn on and then cut out of cardboard, probably by Harry.

The only thing at all attractive about that tree was the string of lights in which it was carefully wound. Those big, glowing, jewel-like bulbs. Harry must have found them in the attic when they were going through their mother's house. And somehow held on to them, though now that the memories seemed to be awakening from their slumber John did recall that in that Norwood house, it was always small white lights. On the tree, along the edges of the walkway, and round the edges of the frog pond on the lawn.

But Harry wasn't in that house any more. She was living here, in the kind of depressing furnished one-bedroom that was usually let by the month to corporate stiffs sent out to London for some temporary assignment. And because it was only one bedroom and because Harry hadn't fought him too hard when he protested that she shouldn't give up her bedroom for him, the John of this particular Christmas was sleeping on the depressing couch, with one of their mother's crocheted afghans draped over the blanket draped over the sheet draped over him. 

He wasn't too different, this John. Wearing a singlet and boxers and wrapped in that black pinstripe dressing gown that Sherlock kept borrowing to do his chemistry experiments in. There, on the cuff, John could see the acid burn. 

Oh no. It was THAT Christmas. The Irene Adler Christmas. 

"This is wrong," John said.

The Doctor shook her head. "No."

"This is my current timeline."

"No it isn't."

"Yes it is! I remember all of this--the couch, the tree, the stupid Christmas jumper in that shiny red parcel sitting under it--"

"Oh Doctor, you loved that jumper," said the Doctor. "No, you _did._ It was warm and soft and the color brought out your eyes and  _everything._ Otherwise you wouldn't have worn it to the party, would you."

"Look, _Doctor,"_ said John, turning away from the slightly younger John on the sofa and drawing closer to the current bane of his existence, who continued to regard him with an infuriating half-smile. "All night long I have been trying _very_ hard to suppress the urge to punch you in the face. Don't make it stronger."

"This is not your current timeline," said the Doctor, as if he hadn't spoken at all. "It is, for the moment, _coincident_  with your current timeline and that's why you remember some of it. But if you will just stop  _glowering_ at me and  _watch,_ you will discover--"

The door to the apartment's only bedroom opened, and out of it drifted Harry. She wore a gray t-shirt over plaid flannel boxers, and her hair, which she had dyed black and was now wearing very short at the sides, had gone a bit mad up top.

"Merry Christmas," Harry said.

The slightly-younger John shifted onto his side and raised his head from the arm of the couch. "Oh. Yes. Merry Christmas."

They looked at each other. Each seemed to be waiting, very warily, for some signal from the other before speaking. It became awkward. Finally Harry turned away and walked into the kitchenette which was separated from the living area by a half-wall.

"Tea or coffee?" Harry said, opening the fridge. She removed a carton of eggs from inside the door, then rummaged in another drawer and produced a package wrapped in butcher paper. It was indeed, as he discovered when she untied the string, bacon.

"Tea, thanks. I can make it--"

"No, it's all right." Harry produced a kettle from one of the cupboards, filled it with water, and plugged it in. "This is a one-person kitchen if there ever was one. You relax and open your gift."

The other John looked guiltily at the box under the tree.

"I didn't get you anything," he said. "I didn't know we were--"

"That's all right," Harry cut him off. "I didn't think we were either, only I saw this in one of Norwood's many mostly-useless boutiques and I thought, what the hell."

While Harry clanked around in the kitchen and the other John opened the box to find the inevitable jumper, John said to the Doctor, "What happened to the house? Or was that the other timeline?"

The Doctor glanced over at the kitchenette.

Suddenly, Harry and John were seated at the cheap metal kitchen table, facing off over toast, bacon, eggs, and stewed tomato. John could still remember the taste of that bacon. It reminded him of home. In a good way, for once. The other John seemed to have warmed up a bit now that he had something in his stomach, and they were talking much more easily.

The other John picked up a piece of toast. John noticed with a bit of a pang that Harry had cut the crusts off. While he was chewing, Harry said, "What made you decide to come?"

The other John took a bite of toast. He chewed, somewhat distractedly, then said, "You invited me."

"I've invited you every year for the past five years."

John had often  _felt_ his jaw clench like that but he didn't usually  _see_ it.

"Well. This is your first year sober," the other John finally said, looking down at his fried egg and breaking the yolk. "At least the first year you've said you are. Or rather the first year you've said you are and it might actually be true."

Harry put down her fork and knife. Very carefully, she said, "True."

And yet, somehow she gave the impression that she thought this was not an adequate explanation for his presence. The other John smarted under her gaze for a few moments, then looked up and said, "And your first Christmas in ten years without Clara."

Harry leaned back in her chair and sighed. "Also true."

"What..." John gestured with his fork, on which a shiny square of egg white was still impaled. "What happened...with...all that?"

Harry chewed her bacon in silence for a moment.

"Clara and my sobriety are incompatible," Harry finally replied.

More silent eating, while John wondered exactly what that meant.

"Well I appreciate it," Harry said, at last, before turning to her mug of tea. "If that's the reason."

The other John cracked the piece of toast he was buttering. "Why wouldn't that be the reason? What other reason would there be?"

Harry tried to wave her last line away. "Sorry, sorry, I shouldn't have said that. I believe you. I just had it in my head there might...never mind."

"There might what?" the other John demanded, now visibly tense.

"I don't know why, it just came into my head last night while we were coming back from the movie theater," she said. "I mean it's mad of course, but I just had the thought, that you might have..."

She trailed off. The other John pressed her. "Might have _what?"_

John wondered if his voice often sounded like that to other people. The flinch he felt when he heard it was repeated, more faintly, by the Doctor.

"Might have...well I just thought you might have met someone. That's all."

Nobody was eating now.

"I told you about Jeanette," the other John said.

"Yes I know," Harry replied, a bit too quickly. "She sounds lovely. I'd love to meet her sometime. You know, after you're satisfied--"

" _Satisfied?"_ the other John demanded. 

Harry looked suddenly mortified. "I mean--about my being sober. I didn't mean--I didn't mean to--look, how about I shut up and we just eat breakfast. I should have known better than to try to talk to you before I've had my tea."

"No," the other John said, putting down his own mug. "No, let's have it. What do you mean, _met someone,_ since you obviously didn't mean Jeannette?"

"Please, John," Harry said. "I made a mistake. I'm sorry. Please don't keep making me pay for it."

The other John slammed down his knife and fork and leapt from his chair. "Where's your washroom?"

"You know where it is, John. Through the bedroom and to the right."

The other John stormed off through the bedroom door. Harry slammed one hand on the table and stood up. She carried her plate to the sink and began scraping her breakfast into it.

John had only a moment to note the tornado of grief that was swirling around Harry's silent form before he was somehow whisked into the bedroom. The other John had just emerged from the shower and was toweling off. He pulled his clothes out of the overnight bag he'd evidently taken in there with him. Once dressed, he stood very still for a moment and looked around. John had no idea what the other John was about to do. He did not remember any of this conversation.

What the other John did, in the end, was begin a furtive, silent, very thorough search of Harry's bedroom.

Through the closed door John could hear the sink running, which would camouflage the sound of Harry's dresser drawers sliding open and sliding shut--of the other John crawling under the skirt of the bed and then out the other side--of the other John lifting up the pillows, the sheets, the mattress--of John shoving his arm down behind the ancient and peeling radiator--of John pulling the desk chair away from the computer table, balancing himself precariously on it, and reaching up to the highest shelves in Harry's closet, feeling past the rows of summer shirts and silk pajamas and other things Harry had evidently renounced after her split with Clara until, behind a pair of high-heeled black patent leather pumps, he finally found what he was evidently looking for.

It was a very shapely bottle, and the liquid in it was a very rich amber. John recognized the label. Single malt. Imported. Not cheap. Three-quarters empty.

Purely for relief, John turned away from the other John's slowly transforming face to the Doctor's. That face shocked him too. He had somehow been assuming, all night long, that the Doctor was not really capable of human feeling. But either she was feeling profound sorrow at this moment, or John had forgotten what sorrow looked like on other people.

The other John shoved his nightclothes viciously into the overnight bag. He shoved the bottle into it too. He tried to look calm when he walked out into the living room but it did not seem as if Harry, who was crouched by the tree gathering up the torn wrapping paper, was fooled by it. 

"So that's why you split up," the other John said. "Because you got sober."

"No," Harry said. "We split up because I realized I had to leave Clara to  _get_ sober."

"Why?" the other John demanded.

"God, that's a long answer and it certainly doesn't look as if you care," Harry shot back. "I am sorry I brought it up. I just wanted to give you the opportunity--in case--"

"You have been lying to me ever since you opened your door to me," the other John shouted. "From the  _moment_ you said you were glad to see me."

"John, I  _am_ glad to see you--"

"Why did you ask me down here? To go through this _performance_?" The other John threw an arm out at her in an accusing gesture. "You can't fool Clara any more so you want to see if you can still fool me?"

"All right just stop this," Harry said. She was standing, and shaking now, thought it was hard to know whether with anger or with fear. "We don't need to go down this road, John, neither of us ever wants to see the end of this road ag--"

"SHUT UP!"

The other John thrust his arm into his overnight bag. He brandished the bottle of single malt.

"Just SHUT UP! You LIAR!"

The color drained from Harry's face. Beads of sweat sprang out on her forehead. She looked like Hamlet seeing his father's ghost.

"Oh my God," she whispered. "Where did you find that?"

"I'm not a _child_ , Harry."

"John," she said, and now she was beginning to look slightly green. "Please take that into the kitchen and pour it down the sink." And, as he glared at her, his nostrils still flaring with rage, she repeated: "John. Will you please just do it. Will you please do it NOW."

"Why can't you _stop lying_?" the other John demanded. It was hard now to know if he were shouting or crying.

"Because I HAVE stopped lying!" Harry shouted, still pallid and still shaking. 

"Then what is--" the other John shot back, shaking the bottle at her.

"Stop DOING that!" Harry cried. "That's single-malt Tallisker, it's more expensive than fucking gold, do you think I spend that kind of money on _myself_?"

"Oh, you're buying it for someone _else_?" the other John demanded. "How _stupid_ do you think I--"

"All right, fine. Fine. I didn't want to tell you about any of this mess but I'm sure that humiliating yourself in front of your only surviving family member is implied somewhere in one of the steps."

Harry closed her eyes, passed a trembling hand over her face, and took a deep breath.

In the tones of shame, Harry said, "Clara brought it over, a week after I moved out. As a fucking _housewarming present_."

The other John still clutched the neck of the bottle, as if it were the hilt of a weapon.

"You expect me to believe--" the other John began.

"You don't know!" Harry shouted. "You've seen just about all of _my_ ugly but you never saw three-quarters of Clara's. I mean I don't expect you to believe it, what man would ever look at her and look at me and believe it, but she wants me back. To this day she wants me back and that's why she came over here to this  _shithole_ with a bottle of first class whiskey and yes, since you ask, I drank half of it with her AND I slept with her and when she left in the morning I thought I couldn't live without her OR without whiskey but I bloody  _have,_ I fucking  _do,_ and the only reason that bottle is still in this dump is that I _hid_ it when I was _drunk_ and then  _forgot_ where I put it!"

The other John looked a bit shaken. He lowered the bottle and placed it, tentatively, on the coffee table. Then he drew a very noisy and very angry breath.

"So," he said, clipping the syllable sharply. "That's your story, is it, that this is just another one of those little things that slip your mind when you're slobbering, pissing, groveling _drunk_ \--"

"You know what, John?" Harry shouted. "I don't care if you believe me. I really don't. All I want you to do is pour the rest of that shit down the sink and then run the water for a few seconds afterward. Or if you can't be bothered just put it back in your bag and take it with you when you go. But don't leave it  _sitting_ there. It's cruel."

"Oh, I'm sorry," said the other John, with false concern. "Have I hurt your _feelings_?"

Harry snatched the jumper out of its gift box and threw it at the other John. He actually took a step forward to catch it.

"Merry Christmas and Happy New Year and get the fuck out," Harry said, smoldering. "Go on back to Baker Street. That's where you want to be anyway. Sherlock Holmes must be a patient bloody man," Harry went on, bitingly. "Because you are a _terrible_ detective."

The other John's rage seemed to have frozen now, instead of boiling over. He said, slowly and precisely, "And you're a terrible driver."

There was a hard, stinging silence.

"What are you waiting for, John?" Harry finally said. "For me to say I'm sorry? I've been saying it for years, you were practically begging me to stop saying it. For me to know how much I hurt you? Well that's going to be a lifetime project but you keep finding ways to help it along. For me to feel like shit? I look at these scars in the mirror every fucking morning," Harry went on, tracing the line of raised skin that ran along the side of her neck. "You think I don't start the day knowing I'm a murderer? You think in six years I have ever forgotten for one second that I killed Mary?"

The other John stared at her in stony silence.

"It is an honest to God miracle," Harry said, "that I believe there is still something in me worth saving. I can't expect you to believe it and I don't need you to believe it. I shouldn't have asked you down here. I just...I read your blog, it's a good blog, you're a good writer, and you seemed happy, and I just thought maybe there was a chance that you might be ready to...to move forward."

John had the feeling that everyone in the room was hearing her voice say it at that moment:  _I thought you might have met someone._

He was not prepared for how fast the other John's hand shot out to grab the neck of that bottle. Or for the shattering crash as the bottle came down on the edge of the coffee table.

Glass flew everywhere. The other Harry covered her face and turned away to avoid it. Across the surface of the coffee table, an amber liquid spread silently and swiftly, pouring in rivulets over the edges and onto the beige carpet.

John felt cold all over. He felt sick. He felt his own hands burning. He felt his knuckles throbbing, felt phantom stickiness on their skin.

Harry swung around and started toward the other John. John thought at first she might be about to strike his younger self. Instead, she bent to pick up the jumper, which had fallen to the floor. She straightened up and shoved it against the other John's chest.

"Get out. Go home. Don't call me. Don't email me. Don't text me. We're done."

The other John picked up his overnight bag. He walked out, still clutching the jumper in his free hand. The door slammed behind him.

Harry turned around, her back to the door, and sank down to the floor, crying.

"Oh God," she whispered. She curled up in a fetal position, back to the door, hands in fists, pressed against her eyes. "Oh God. The whole place smells of it. Oh God."

The Doctor tapped John on the shoulder.

They were on the suburban line now, heading back to London. The other John was curled up against the window in one of the seats. He looked nearly fetal, and he had been crying. He was wearing the jumper. It did look warm, and soft, and he had always liked that shade of blue.

John remembered wearing the jumper at the party. He hadn't remembered, at the time, any of this. It hadn't happened. Harry _might_ have given him the jumper in his current timeline--he had been to visit her after all, and he had a vague sense now that even in his current timeline, that visit had not gone well--but it definitely hadn't happened in that particular way. He's felt good, wearing that jumper. He'd felt...happy. Until that dreadful business with Molly's present. And until Sherlock found that box on the mantel with Irene Adler's phone in it. And until John spent the holidays watching Sherlock lose the woman he loved.

He'd worried, all day every day, that Sherlock would die. If not by his own hand the out of grief or just out of inattention to his own welfare. It had been hard for John to believe that Sherlock could survive Irene's loss.

_I just thought you might have met someone._

John turned to the Doctor. She was sitting next to him, sharing the seat though the compartment was nearly empty.

"I told you you wouldn't like it," she said.

John remembered something Sherlock had said to him, shortly after he'd arrived back at Baker Street, trying to pretend the trip had been a great success.  _When a fact appears to be opposed to a long train of deductions, it invariably proves to be capable of bearing some other interpretation._

Sherlock had known. Somehow. As he knew everything, eventually.

"So Harry was telling the truth," John said, with a sigh.

"Oh yes," said the Doctor.

"And I am a terrible detective."

The Doctor shrugged. "In this timeline, you improve."

"And...Harry really killed Mary?"

The Doctor sighed, perplexed.

"That car crash in Edinburgh," the Doctor said. "No Provencale wedding in this timeline, because no mysterious pearls. But there was a wedding planned, and there was a car crash, and Harry was in the car with Mary...and I've tried, I have tried so many times to make this come out right but in every timeline in which you know Sherlock and marry Mary, you lose her. Every time. You blamed Harry in this timeline, you blame Sherlock in your own. In other timelines you blame other people. Blame the laws of time, Doctor Watson. I do."

"So I can't have him without losing her," John murmured.

"If there were a way that you could, I'd have found it by now."

The undying pain in John's heart throbbed again.

"Do I ever..." he began, as the other John began nervously rubbing his knuckles, one hand over the other. "Do I ever...move forward?"

"In this timeline?"

"In...sure. In this timeline."

"Well," said the Doctor, clapping her hands together and rubbing them with barely-suppressed glee. "Let me show you just a bit of the  _next_ Christmas."

"If it's like this one--"

"It's not," said the Doctor. "Totally different experience. Extremely dangerous, of course, but--"

"Wait-- _extremely_ dangerous?"

"ALLONS-Y!"

END CHAPTER

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The one time, in canon, that John ever mentions having contact with Harry is in "A Scandal in Belgravia," where Molly mentions that he's spending the holidays with Harry and John says she's "off the booze." This chapter is set during that visit. It belongs to the timeline established in "Empty Houses," but it is also more or less consistent with the "current timeline," i.e., the canon timeline.


	5. TOO MANY DOCTORS

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> OK, the Doctor isn't just a framing device any more.

"Cabin crew, prepare for landing!" 

The Doctor pulled an enormous lever projecting from the round console in the center of the...insane...thing...in which she and John were traveling. She had told him what it was called but he couldn't remember it. He vaguely thought it was something to do with a tart, though that didn't seem right. Maybe because it was round...?

Whatever it was, it hit something solid, rather suddenly and with more than the usual _thunk_. As John picked himself up from the floor, he could see the Doctor shrugging off the white robe and flinging it to the back of the room.

"Tally-ho!" she cried, brightly. "Out the door and into Christmas!"

The floor of the...tart plus whatever...vibrated to a low, booming sound that seemed to be rumbling up from the bowels of whatever planet they'd landed on.

"What's going on out there?" John demanded, before moving. "Where are we?"

"To answer your questions in order," she said, "No idea, and most likely somewhere in London."

"You said it would be  _extremely dangerous_ ," John repeated.

"Extremely," the Doctor replied.

"How do you know that?"

"Because I don't remember a thing about it."

John's head drew back. "That doesn't make sense."

"It does to me."

Another boom, this one sharper, louder, and closer. Then a swift clattering of feet outside, followed by a terrific bang on the closed double doors.

John instinctively felt for his gun. He saw the Doctor picking up that glowing metal cylinder she carried around everywhere and pointing it at the doors.

They flew open.

Through them burst a tall, very thin man with short, bristly, light brown hair. He wore tennis shoes and a long brown coat and, underneath that, a pinstriped suit that seemed to have gone slightly mad. He pulled up short, looking straight at the Doctor, and thrust out at her a metal cylinder that looked very much like her own. 

"Who are you?" demanded the man in the brown coat.

She was positively sparkling with glee. "I'm the Doctor!"

The man in the brown coat let out a short, confused laugh. "No, I'm the..."

He trailed off. His eyes lit up. A two hundred and fifty watt smile appeared on his face.

"BRILLIANT!" he shouted.

"I know!" she shouted back.

The man in the brown coat moved toward the Doctor, then changed course and spun around, motioning frantically to someone on the other side of the open doors. "Harry! Donna! Reinforcements! At last!"

John tried to brace himself for what was liable to be a very unpleasant reunion. The Doctor and the man in the brown coat, however, had no qualms about what was evidently _some_ kind of reunion. As they beamed at each other, two figures ran through the doors, panting and, it seemed, singed in multiple places. The man in the brown coat didn't even look at them. He just reached behind him to light-beam the doors shut, and then practically floated over toward the console, drawn by some magnetic force.

"You," he breathed. "Oh, I am REALLY looking forward to this. Are you next, or--"

"No, nor the next next, I'm the one after that."

"So two between us."

"Yeah."

"Were either of them ginger?"

"I'll let you wonder," said the Doctor. 

The new arrivals were also staring at the Doctor. One of them was obviously Harry, though she had spectacles and a new haircut and was wearing an apron over her Christmas outfit. Why he was relieved to see her wearing boots, dark trousers, and a purple silk blouse, he wasn't quite certain. John did not call out to her. The moment of recognition was bound to be very painful for both of them, after what had passed at the last Christmas in this timeline.

The other figure was wrapped in an enormous, puffy, faux-fur-trimmed anorak. She pulled down the hood, revealing a striking face, some very sparkly earrings, and a quite voluminous mane of red hair. She looked from the man in the brown coat to the Doctor, and her jaw actually dropped.

"Is that--" The woman with the red hair gestured toward the Doctor.

:"Oh yes!" said the man in the brown coat. 

The red-haired woman's hands flew into the air. Her mouth opened even wider. She let out a kind of squeal and began doing some sort of dance. 

"Oh. My. GOD!" she shrieked. "Tell me everything! When did it happen? How did it happen? Did you go messing about with volcanoes without me?"

Quite without warning, the Doctor burst into tears.

Nearly everything that had happened since their landing had shocked John. This was the first thing that had shocked anyone else.

"Oh dear," said the red-haired woman. "Do I die horribly? Is it _very_ tragic?"

The Doctor shook her head. She wiped her streaming nose on one sleeve of her striped shirt. "No," said. "No, it's just...it's been so long, and...nothing. It's nothing. I'm fine--"

But the red-haired woman was stalking forward already, arms outstretched. "Come here, spaceman. Give us a hug."

The Doctor allowed the giant anorak to enfold her. John finally realized what was wrong with this picture.

"Hang on," John said. "They're not supposed to be able to see or hear us."

"John!" Harry shouted, finally noticing him. 

She ran toward him, eagerly. His heart rose, for a moment. Then she stopped. Her head tilted. A look of suspicion crossed her face.

Obviously. She'd remembered.

"Wait a minute," Harry said. "You don't..."

"Well done Harry," called the Doctor. "This is in fact not the John you're looking for." 

Harry now looked truly horrified. "Then what is he?"

"Think like a timelord," snapped the man in the brown coat. "Note the face, the hair, the extra ten pounds--"

"Hey," John snapped. 

"Ah," said Harry, and the suspicion melted away. "You're from the future too. Sorry. Well thank God you _have_ a future." 

Harry's mouth twisted, and he heard something like a snuffle. Then she grabbed him a very tight hug. John hugged her back. He couldn't understand it. It was as if she had no memory of the previous Christmas at all, even though the Doctor had insisted this was the same timeline. And, up close, he could see she still had the scars from the accident.

The red-haired woman finally tore herself away from the Doctor and the man in the brown coat and advanced on him with a slightly worrying enthusiasm. She grabbed his right hand in both of her red-taloned ones and pumped it hard. "Turning up again like the bad penny you are," she said, smiling. "I told you, Harry, didn't I tell you it would be all right?"

John looked at Harry, bewildered. "Is this--your new--"

"We're not a couple," Harry and Donna said, at the same time.

Donna dropped his hand and gave him a once-over. "Doctor...is he snubbing me to my face, or did you wipe his memory?"

"No!" the Doctor said, with unexpected vehemence. "I've sworn off mind wipes. Forever. It's just we've got--"

The man in the brown coat chimed in with her. "Too many Doctors."

"What?" John demanded.

They looked at each other. The man in the brown coat gestured to the other. "Please. After you."

"Thank you," said the Doctor, with real warmth. "Doctor--look, we've got a lot of doctors in here, do you mind if I just call you Watson?" John drew a breath to protest. "Great, thanks, brilliant. You see, Watson, any time you put two of me in the same place at the same time, some very special and rather dangerous things happen, and one of them is that the earlier me--that's him--"

The Doctor in the brown coat gave John with a little wave. Donna laughed.

"--is unable to remember anything that happens during the encounter which explains why I, that is me, that is the current me, the me that you've met, don't remember what's about to happen, even though for the current me it has in fact already happened. Is that clear?"

"Are you joking?" John replied.

She kept right on going. "And Multiphasal Simultaneity is impossible to maintain under these conditions, so we're all rattling around in one big happy timescape at the moment. Point of information, Watson: if someone shoots at you in this one, they'll hit you."

"That doesn't explain why Watson doesn't remember me," Donna pointed out.

"Can you not..." John said, but no one was listening.

"Well, Donna--" said the man in the brown coat. "Oh, hang on, she's right, it doesn't."

The man in the brown coat looked at the Doctor. The Doctor said, "He's from an alternative."

"Oh," said Donna, Harry, and the man in the brown coat, in perfect unison. "Of course."

"Pity," said Donna. "I was hoping Watson could tell us how we're going to survive this."

"Survive--what--just WAIT a moment," John burst in. He appealed to the Doctor. "You told me _this_ timeline was--"

"--SUCH a wonderful opportunity for him, he doesn't get out much, only on Christmas of course," said the Doctor, hustling around the console and taking John by the arm. She drew him, rather roughly, off in...well, it wasn't a corner, of course, but far enough away from the others, and hissed into his ear.

"First rule of Christmas caroling, Watson," she whispered fiercely. "NEVER tell anyone that their timeline is an alternative."

"Why?"

"People don't like to know their timelines have been foreclosed. It means nothing they've done will make a difference. Which to be honest is true for most living creatures, but usually one needn't face it. Facing it makes people depressed. It has been known to lead to suicide. So I beg you, Watson, please do NOTHING to indicate that this is the last Christmas this timeline will ever see, or that in the timeline of record, you can't decide whether Harry exists and Donna has no idea who I am. Do you understand?"

"But you told them that I'M from an alternative," John objected. "In front of me."

 She looked back at him, vexed.

 More banging on the doors. And now there was a muffled, metallic, droning noise to go with it.

"Oh no no no NO!" Harry shouted.

"Doctor!" called the man in the brown coat. "When you've quite finished flirting--"

"I am not FLIRTING!" the Doctor shot back. 

The noise kept up. The floor began vibrating. 

Harry moved toward him. "Listen, John, we're in a hurry, and--"

"Yes, good point," said the man in the brown coat. "Bring Watson up to speed, will you Harry? Time's burning." He sniffed the air. "Possibly literally. You stay here, Doctor, I'll clear the area."

"No, I will," said the Doctor. The man in the brown coat began to argue, but she held up a hand. "Ah ah ah! You're exhausted. I'm brand new, fully rested, and HIGHLY motivated."

The Doctor grabbed a spanner that was dangling from one of the consoles in one hand and her light-up wand with the other, and leapt through the opening doors, screaming, "BUCKLE UP, BUCKETHEADS!" 

The man in the brown coat closed the doors. "Don't think that one'll catch on," he muttered. 

He swung around and became intensely absorbed in one of the monitors at the console. As he banged furiously away at the keyboard, John allowed Harry to draw him aside and sit him down on one of the swivel chairs. 

"So, John, the story so far..."

The look of frustrated bafflement on Harry's face was almost enough to make John laugh. He could imagine her looking just that way at the pile of cardboard and scraps from which she'd made that substitute operating room playset, trying to work out where to begin.

Imagining that moment felt strangely calming. He wondered if it were part of this timeline too. 

"I'll just give you the precis," Harry said. "It's Christmas Day, and we're fighting the cybermen."

"Fighting-- _cybermen_?"

"Human beings augmented with alien technology--" Harry began, before Donna called over to cut her off.

"They're robots, Watson," Donna said. She had dumped her anorak and was now looking on while the man in the brown coat fiddled with knobs and cursed under his breath. "Big metal robots powered by human brains, stomping about and blowing things up."

John laughed.

"Yeah, I know how it sounds," Harry said. "But it's not funny. Cybermen replicate themselves by 'converting' human beings into cyborgs. They sent an advance guard to set up a conversion base under the Thames but Sherlock happened to find it while he was searching for a band of imaginary eco-terrorists--"

Donna failed to suppress a laugh. Harry shot her a Look, then returned to John. 

"So their conversion base got filled in with cement, but they just kept looking for a new one, and as it happens they started here."

"Where ARE we?"

"We're..." Harry took a deep breath. "Now...promise you won't...oh, wait, alternative, right, never mind. We're on the roof of St. Bart's."

Harry saw the look in John's eyes. She went suddenly quiet for a few moments.

"So you...you have that in your...your timeline," she finally said, warily.

"Correct," John bit off.

"Well, the cybermen have taken over St. Bart's and they're setting up a conversion base in it."

"Where's Molly? Is she all right?" John said.

"This is what I'm explaining," Harry went on. "Molly was at my place for Christmas dinner, with Greg and everyone else and then the Doctor and Donna showed up and told us about the cybermen and we all piled into the TARDIS and Sherlock and the Doctor--the other doctor, you know, Donna's doctor--"

"How many Doctors are there?" John demanded. 

"Well, normally only one at a time," Harry said. "But at times of crisis they do tend to multiply."

The double doors flew open, then clanged shut. In the vestibule stood the Doctor, brandishing a massive, chrome-plated blaster in one hand and what looked like the right arm of a suit of armor in the other.

"VICTORY!" she shouted.

"For ten minutes," said the man in the brown coat.

"Oh, I know, but they'll be NICE minutes." She slapped the metal arm against the other Doctor's chest. "Hook that up to the diagnostics and let's find out how their tech works THIS time."

"My wish is my command," said the man in the brown coat.

"Are they...how are they both...the same...?" John floundered.

"Regeneration," said everyone else in the room, in exactly the same tone.

"You have NO IDEA how annoying that is," John snapped. 

Harry sighed. "Listen. Timelords don't die, they...regenerate. Into someone new. It's still them, just...everything's different."

"So--but--how are they both alive now, then?" John said.

"Well, just--look, John, when you fuck around with time sometimes you wind up beside yourself. You follow?"

"As a matter of fact," John replied, "I do."

"Good. So, everyone worked out a battle strategy, and it was brilliant in theory, but several things have not gone according to plan and...and the upshot is, John, that you and Greg and Molly went into St. Bart's an hour ago and we lost contact with you five minutes afterward. Then Sherlock went down there after you and we were just running after him when a pile of cybermen came blasting out of the air vents. We fought the first wave off, but they managed to timelock the building so we can't land the TARDIS inside. Then I tried to climb in through the air vents, which is a lot harder than it looks on television, and got stuck, and while Donna and the Doctor were helping me out, Mrs. Hudson appears to have accidentally activated the TARDIS controls--"

"You left her in there on her own," Donna interjected. "I _said_ we should have given her something to do--"

"I backed you up!" Harry said, "It was Sherlock's fault. She's the one person on earth he won't endanger."

 _Sherlock's fault._ The phrase burned right through him.

Sherlock. He was there. In this timeline. In this building. The prospect of seeing him soon, and the fact that he wasn't seeing him NOW, instantly became equally unbearable to John. He tried to focus on what Harry was saying, but it was difficult. 

"So," Harry said. "Mrs. Hudson and the TARDIS are probably having a cuppa at the end of the universe right now, and I don't begrudge it to them, but this did leave us exposed when the cybermen came back. But luckily you and your Doctor and your TARDIS arrived and now you can lead a new expedition to rescue the other expeditions."

There was a whirring, clanking sound over by the console. The Doctor was shining that wand at the metal arm, which was curling and uncurling as if it were lifting weights.

"Oh well done, Doctor," said the man in the brown coat. "Now deactivate."

The Doctor pressed a key. The metal arm went rigid and the whirring died.

"MOLTO bene!" exclaimed the man in the brown coat. He and the Doctor high-fived. "Ladies! Gentlemen! Doctors of all ages! Gather round, I have a plan!"

Everyone flocked to the central console.

"It's like this," the Doctor said. "I can now hack the cybermen's programming, but it evolves so fast that I'll have to keep updating the malware after it's in there.  I also have to _get_  the malware into their system, which we can't do remotely. So I've put the malware into this arm," she said, brandishing the thing. "All I have to do is get into the building, find a cyberman, rip his arm off, attach this one, reboot him, keep the malware current while it spreads, and then we deactivate the whole army. At the right moment. We do not want to deactivate them at the  _wrong_ moment."

"No we do not," said Harry grimly.

"What's the wrong moment?" John asked.

Harry looked down at the console. Donna patted her on the shoulder, and said it for her.

"The cybermen are...they're a bit fixated on your friend Sherlock. They wanted to convert him first. The brain, you know. And if they've...started...converting Sherlock, then deactivation might kill him. Or you, or Greg, or Molly, if they're being converted too."

The shuddering that had begun in John's viscera as soon as he first heard Sherlock's name threatened to engulf John's entire body. 

The man in the brown coat nodded. "I'll be updating the software up here while I'm installing the hardware down there. Watson will be leading the rescue team. When everyone's either found or accounted for, you bring the survivors back to the TARDIS and then once I let me know I'm ready, I'll hit the big red button."

John shook his head. He blinked. He felt his brain setting all of that aside except for the word _survivors_.

"So, Watson," the Doctor barked. "Any questions?"

John pushed all the fear into the pit of his stomach, where, under pressure, it ignited into burning anger.

"Let's go," he said.

"That's the spirit!" the Doctor sang out. She handed him the giant blaster. "Here you go, Watson. Your basic disintegration beam, point and shoot, careful there's no safety setting. Harry, Donna, you're with me. Braces on, chin up, hearts afire and ALLONS-Y!"

The Doctor grabbed the robot arm in her left hand, swung it round her head once, and then held it aloft like a banner or a lance, pointed toward the opening doors. 

John lifted the blaster. He looked over at Harry. She was rummaging in her apron pocket with one hand. She pulled out a playing card. No, a tarot card. The Hanged Man. She looked at the image, furtively pressed her lips to it, and tucked it back in. She patted the pocket, then looked over at him and smiled bravely.

"Should you be doing this?" he whispered. "Are you even armed?"

"I'll be all right, John," she murmured back. "Marie says I have an unusually long lifeline."

He stared at her, lost. She slapped him on the shoulder.

"Come on, Johnny, quick march!" she sang out. "When the foeman bares his steel--"

John felt a surge of warmth. He chimed in, almost joyously. 

"Ta ran ta ra, ta ran ta ra!"

"We uncomfortable feel--"

"Ta RAN ta RA!"

They ran out, side by side, through the closing double doors.

* * *

After the hideous battle to _get_ inside--up on the roof John had dispatched five of the creatures, and though with the blaster there was no blood or screams, the smell was horrifying--the actual hospital seemed eerily quiet. The hall they huddled in was dim; only the emergency lights glowed at intervals along the floor and where the walls joined the ceiling. If it hadn't been for the distant booming and the constant vibrations they were picking up through the floor, you'd have thought the place was empty.

"Main power's down," the Doctor observed. "They're drawing it all to wherever they've set up their chop shop, I imagine. Bad luck for the patients."

"Depends how you look at it," Donna replied. "If you die, they can't convert you."

" _Donna!_ " Harry whispered, fiercely.

"Actually, they can," said the Doctor.

"No," Donna gasped. "That's HORRIBLE! You never told us--"

"Well I don't know it yet, do I," said the Doctor, defensively. "Sand Shoes up there hasn't encountered that yet. That's one of Missy's innovations."

"Who's Missy?" Donna demanded.

The Doctor sat for a moment, with a faraway look in her eyes.

"Interesting question," she finally murmured. "I don't think I'll ever know."

In the awkward silence, John said, "It's all right, at least for the moment. We're on the top floor of the West Wing. It's mostly classrooms and offices. From what you've told me so far, they'd be in the King George wing. That's where all the operating theatres are."

"Take us there," the Doctor whispered.

Blaster cocked, John led them carefully down the hall, sticking as close to the wall as possible. The lift was out of order. John halted at the nearest stairwell door, listening. Quiet.

"In here," he whispered. "There's a pedestrian bridge two floors below."

He flung the door open, blaster at the ready. The stairwell was also dark, except for emergency lights; and empty. He nodded to the others, and they followed him in.

"What exactly is involved in...'converting' people?" Donna said, as they rushed down the stairs. "Is it just implants, or do things have to be lopped off or cut out, or what?"

The Doctor gave a little shudder. "It's mostly armor-plating and implanting sensors. The head's the most complicated bit--all the wires and chips and the emotion-dampeners, it's very tricky."

"So they'd go straight to the brain surgeons," Harry said.

"Bart's isn't big on neurology," John said. "It's your garden variety hospital...cardiac, cancer, radiology...fact is, if they're looking for an army, they shouldn't have started with Bart's."

"Why not?"

"It's Christmas day," John said. "Nobody who can help it wants to be in hospital on Christmas day. The only people who come in on Christmas are accidents and emergencies, and Bart's doesn't have an A & E center. There'll be people on the convalescent wards, of course, but otherwise, it's just a skeleton crew."

"So to speak," Donna muttered. 

They had reached the door marked "TO PEDESTRIAN BRIDGE." John motioned for silence. He put his ear to the door. The booms were louder now, though still distant. Periodically, as if through water, he could hear the whizzing click that he now associated with the movements of the cybermen's surprisingly ungainly limbs. The tech, he was assured, kept improving. But they seemed to have chosen protection over agility every time. Their movements were slow, heavy, and clumsy. Too much armor.

He motioned for them to crowd around him. They crowded too close. He sighed, and dealt with it. 

"On the other side of this door, there are automatic doors leading to the bridge," he whispered. "The automatic doors are glass. It sounds as if they've posted a sentry on the other side of the glass doors. He--"

"Or she," Donna whispered. "Could be a cyberwoman. They all come out the same."

"All right," John hissed back. "He, or she, will see us as soon as we open this door. Harry, you pull the door open and I'll come out blasting. Doctor, Donna, you come in behind me once the coast is clear and Harry brings up the rear. All right?"

They all nodded. Harry positioned herself on the hinge side of the door, one hand reaching over to rest on the handle. John sidled up to the other side of the door. He looked at Harry and she looked back. John's heart heaved and twisted inside him.

It wasn't fear. It was grief. That mutual glance before opening the door to hell--it brought Sherlock back, swiftly and suddenly and all at once. This was a moment that somehow had arrived in every one of their cases--he and Sherlock, about to leap into battle, pausing for one moment and silently locking eyes. One asking for trust, the other giving it, on the threshold of the ordeal. You said nothing and you knew everything. You didn't speak and you didn't need to. You just knew.

But Sherlock wasn't there. No amount of looking would put him there. It was Harry, receiving his question and giving back the answer. Harry, trusting him. As if last Christmas had never even happened.

John gave her a bit of a nod, and then mouthed, _Now_.

Harry pulled. The door opened. John leapt. The blaster's bright blue beam sliced right through the glass door and right into the silver carapace of the cyberman standing behind it.

Without thinking about it, John fired another blast, this one right in the middle of the chest unit. He saw the doors open as the thing lurched toward him, one metal arm outstretched. He raised the blaster to target the thing's head.

"Hold your fire!" Harry shouted behind him. 

The Doctor and Donna thundered past him, one on either side. They both launched themselves at it. It toppled backwards, landing on its back with a clang. While Donna sat astride it, temporarily concealing the two blackened holes John had burned through its torso, the Doctor rushed to the nearest patient room and flung the door open. She, Harry, and Donna grabbed the fallen cyberman by the head and arms and dragged him in. John, distracted at first by the mingled smell of burning skin and plastic, rushed through the closing door just as the metal feet were disappearing into it.

He heard Harry's voice. "Vatican whatchamacallits!"

John dove for the floor as the gunshot rang out. A quite ordinary gun, a quite ordinary bullet. It buried itself in the wood of the door behind him. Lifting his head to assess the situation, he could see that the patient bed had been thrown onto its side and was barricading the far corner of the room. The muzzle of the gun was poking out over the upper edge. Beneath the lower edge, he could see what he thought was a pair of Army-issue combat boots, and another pair of bare, pale, gnarled feet. In the farthest corner, up against the cabinets under the sink, the cyberman was laid out. Its limbs flailed, rattling against the floor as Donna and Harry threw their weight on top of it while the Doctor worked frantically at the shoulder joint. 

"Who are you?" a voice demanded from behind the barricade. A young voice, low, hard to put a gender on. "Are you human?"

"Well--" the Doctor began.

"YES!" John cut her off. "Yes, we're human. We're all--"

"I AM NOT HUMAN." 

Evidently John hadn't disabled the thing's voice simulator.

The gun went crazy. It wasn't hitting anything below the level of the barricade's upper edge, however; so Harry needn't be twitching and whimpering like that. They were in more danger from flying debris, or from the attention the noise would draw to them, than from the bullets themselves.

The shooting abruptly stopped. Out of ammunition.

"Please put your weapon down," John called out. "We are not with the cybermen. We are here to help you."

The muzzle of the gun remained. But then, from behind the tangle of cushions, sheets, guardrails, and tubing, John heard a different voice. Older, thinner, higher, frail, but definitely male.

"Is that Doctor Watson?" said the voice.

"Yes," John said, quickly. He didn't place the voice but that didn't mean anything; when it came to patients he was not good with either faces or names. "I'm Doctor Watson, this is my sister Harry and these are...my...friends."

"THERE ARE NO FRIENDS. YOU WILL BE CONVERTED."

Donna picked up a portable oxygen canister that had rolled into their corner and began banging at what was left of the cyberman's chest unit. "Will--you--stop--just--droning--on!"

"Aha!"

The Doctor, having somehow picked apart the cyberman's shoulder seam, began carefully slipping the metal shell off the thing's human arm. Only from what John could see of it between the shoulder and the sleeve, it wasn't very human any more. Wrinkled, pasty skin; wires sprouting from it; muscles in a state of advanced deterioration. That body had been inside that shell for a long time. Either that, or it had withered away very quickly.

"It's all right, this won't take a jiffy," the Doctor grunted, slamming the arm back to the ground as it grabbed for him. "Sorry we didn't knock, I'm afraid we're in a bit of a rush. Saving humanity from itself before it's too late and so on. Might I know whose hospitality we're enjoying?"

Two heads appeared above the barricade. Both pale. One barely twenty, one...possibly sixty. The skin condition made it difficult to judge exactly. He'd never seen anything exactly like it, though it might possibly be some new form of psoriasis. The young...woman...had short, rusty black hair that was bright blue at the tips. The man's hair was entirely white, though combed and cut with great care. Clear family resemblance. Grandfather and granddaughter? 

The man gave him an unsteady smile. John knew it hurt the man not to be recognized. Being in an alternative was like being amnesiac; everyone knew you and you knew no one.

"It's Bertie, Doctor," said the man, sadly. "Bertie Kingfisher."

"Oh Jesus Christ!" That was from Harry. "Of all the rooms-- _is that Ryder?_ "

The dark-haired young woman looked over, startled, afraid. Harry stared back, arms folded. Donna looked up.

"Ryder," Donna said. "Is she the one who tried to ritually sacrifice you?"

"She's the one," Harry answered.

Donna gave the dark-haired young woman a look that could have burned through titanium. "I'm a bit preoccupied at the moment," she said, with a newly chilly and slightly posh intonation. "Otherwise I'd get up this instant and slap the magic right out of you." 

"I--I'm--sorry--" Ryder stammered.

"Bloody mental, all of them," Donna muttered. "Children playing with knives. Well, that'd better be all for you, my Sybilline sister. Touch Harry again and I'll have your guts for garters."

"Don't, Donna," Harry said. "Ryder, what are you _doing_ here?"

The young woman looked at the old man next to her.

"I wanted to see my father," she said, her voice shaking. "On Christmas. For once."

"Sweetheart, you shouldn't have," said the older man. "And now look. Robots everywhere, police nowhere in sight. You can't save me. Get out, sweetheart."

"But--"

"SUCCESS!"

Everyone stared at the Doctor. She had the cyberman's metal sleeve in one hand, its wrist still frantically flexing. She threw it into a corner. "Donna, Harry, I need your help, this is the difficult bit. Grab some pincers and let's get wiring."

"One moment," Harry said, as the Doctor began fitting on the modified cyber-arm. "Listen, Bertie, my brother's had a--a concussion, recently, and he's got a bit of retrograde amnesia. It'll clear up eventually but right now, I'm afraid, he won't remember you or Ryder or anything about Kingfisher Syndrome. It's sad, really, but it's most likely temporary. Now we need to be here, but you and Ryder don't. We have a...kind of a helicopter on the roof, we can airlift you out if you can get to it. John'll give you covering fire, just go out and through the sliding glass doors on the right and up two flights of stairs and then--"

She stopped. They all heard it. The low _boom, boom, boom_ of metal feet approaching, in unison.

"Oh bollocks," said the Doctor. "I'm nowhere near done. Watson? Can you...take care of that?"

John glanced at the door. The old man said, "You mean...take care of those...things?"

"That's the idea," John said, readying the blaster. 

The old man's mouth twitched in a half-smile. "You and whose army?" he replied.

John couldn't decide exactly what to say. The booming was getting louder. They still couldn't hear the whizzing, though. It meant they had a few minutes, anyway.

"Right," said the old man.

The overturned hospital bed went sliding across the floor. The old man stepped out from behind it. He wore brown corduroy trousers and a button-down shirt in a kind of muddy plaid. His feet were still bare.

"I'll need my boots," he said to the young woman. "And my gun." 

"Daddy!" Ryder protested. "You're in no condition--"

"No!" he shouted at her. "I'm in no condition. I will never be in condition. _I will never be well again_. I've faced it; why can't you?"

The young woman collapsed onto the floor, weeping. She kept the gun clutched in her hands.

"It's not that I'm not grateful, sweetheart," he said, more gently, as he crouched down near her. "I love you, Ryder, but you need to let me go. I've been dying ever since Afghanistan. I'm tired of it."

Afghanistan.

John looked at him and tried to remember. He seemed far too old to have been in combat. Could he have been one of the nurses?

"The gun, Ryder. Please."

"Oh leave the bloody gun," the Doctor snapped, still intent on her work. "They're no use against the cybermen. You'd be better off with this."

The Doctor kicked the cyberman's discarded metal sleeve across the floor toward him.

"That little nozzle mounted above the wrist shoots out a disintegration beam. Just shove your arm in it and move your wrist to aim. Course it's not hooked up to you, so you'll have to fire it manually. Just press the big glowing yellow button on top."

Bertie lifted the metal sleeve. He looked at it, and not in a friendly way. Then he shoved his arm into it. He flexed it a few times, seemed satisfied, and withdrew his arm. He turned back to Ryder.

"Give us the boots, love," said Bertie Kingfisher, gently. "It'll save my poor feet. Please, Ryder. Do this for me."

Crying even more loudly, the young woman began undoing the laces on her Army-issue boots. She took them off and handed them to him. As he laced them up, she got to her feet. She glared up at John.

"Tell him he doesn't have to do this."

"I KNOW I don't have to do this," he shot back. "I WANT to do it. They sent him in here all alone," he said, pointing at John. "And I'm not much, but some help is better than none. I have a chance to do some good before I die, sweetheart," he said, putting his arms around her as she clung to him. "You don't know how much I need this."

_Boom. Boom. Boom._

The old man looked over Ryder's head at Harry, who was moving a very narrow strand of wire with a very small pair of tweezers.

"You stay here, Ryder," Bertie said. "Harry will see you safe home."

Harry looked up at him and nodded.

"Ryder," she said, a bit sharply. "Come here and give me a hand with this, will you?"

Reluctantly, Ryder let go of her father. She went over to crouch on the floor near Harry, watching the operation, holding the miniature blow torch the Doctor handed her. Her father watched her for a moment, then turned back to John and stood up straighter.

"Lieutenant Kingfisher, reporting for duty, Captain," he said.

_Whirrrrrr. Click. Whirrrrrrr._

"Bloody hell," the Doctor muttered. "Go, Watson, drag them as far away from here as you can and when you've dealt with them see if you can find the others. We'll join you as soon as we can. RUN!"

John turned around. He looked at the door to the corridor. Another door to open. Another fight to charge into, next to another good person who trusted him for no good reason. Who was, painfully, not Sherlock Holmes.

* * * *

By the time they made it to the King George wing, John felt as if he and Bertie had been fighting robots together all their lives. They'd found a rhythm that worked: get the tin man in your sights, John would fire a blast to the chest unit, and then a split-second later, Bertie fired his blast to the head. There'd be a dangerous bit while their weaponized arms were flailing, but once you kicked them over they'd go down like ninepins. 

"Where are we going?" Bertie shouted, over the din and the smoke. 

It was a good question. They'd been through the operating theatres. Each was occupied by its complement of cybermen, now giving off smoke and nonsensical metallic noises as they lay on their backs in a heap; but there didn't seem to be any work being done there. Perhaps they were still waiting. That was probably a good sign. But where was everyone? Where were Molly and Lestrade? Where was...

John wrenched his thoughts away from that question. Why bring Molly into it at all? She had no combat skills and couldn't fire a weapon. She had her medical training, of course; but John was the battlefield surgeon. What had they thought she would be doing on a mission like this? Autopsies?

He had a brief, unpleasant vision of Molly standing over Sherlock's apparently-dead body, bending down to whisper, _All clear_.

The morgue.

If you were in Bart's on Christmas day and you were looking for the biggest concentration of human bodies and you didn't care if they were alive or dead...you'd go to the morgue.

"Lieutenant!" John shouted back, stopping by the nearest stairwell. "Back here!"

Bertie came stalking back, stepping over twitching metal arms, neatly avoiding convulsing metal legs. His borrowed metal arm, with the white flaky skin on his face, put John in mind a bit of Darth Vader with his helmet off.

As he was contemplating this, he heard that whizz behind him. Then, before he could curse himself for losing focus, there was a blast from Bertie's metal wrist, and the metal thing behind him practically hit the ceiling.

"Thanks," John said. "It's lucky you volunteered."

Bertie smiled at him. 

"Are you _sure_ we never served together?" John asked him.

The smile left Bertie's withered lips.

"Yes," he said. "We...my unit was...special."

That was all he was going to say about that, clearly.

At the end of the corridor, he could hear them coming.

"We're going to the morgue," he said. "Down these stairs, right to the bottom. GO!"

John took the lead. They clattered down one, two, three flights unmolested. And then, the place exploded.

It seemed that dozens of the metal things were pouring up the stairs, firing everything they had. John and Bertie pressed themselves up against opposite sides of the stairwell, blasting down at them. That acrid, burning stench filled the air. Below him, John saw the black, smoking holes sprouting all over those gleaming metal bodies. One toppled backward, then another. They fell in a wave, receding down the stairwell, metal on metal on metal on metal. It was like being inside an MRI machine, the ceaseless clanking and banging in that narrow, suffocating tunnel.

"Lieutenant!" John called back at Bertie. "Retreat!"

As he hoped Bertie would understand, their only hope now was to back up the stairwell to the last floor they'd passed and duck through the exit. He couldn't look back; more metal creatures were swarming up, clambering over their fallen comrades without missing a beat. 

Behind him, he heard Bertie's blaster going off. In the opposite direction. 

John glanced up the stairwell. Three cybermen had already come in from the top floor, and more were behind them.

"Run for it, Captain!" Bertie shouted. "I'll hold them off!"

John's stomach twisted. He felt it again, as in Afghanistan: the surge of loathing. For the smell, for the smoke, for futility of it all, for the stupid loss of the brave and the good. Bertie just kept firing.

"It's a good death, sir," Bertie shouted. "It's all I want. Don't WASTE it!" 

A flash of light. A scream from Bertie, and the smell of burning flannel.

John tore up the stairs, flew through the nearest door, slammed it behind him. There were cybermen on the other side--six, eight, he didn't know and by the time he was leaping over their trunks and legs and arms on his way to the opposite stairwell, he didn't care.

This stairwell, mercifully, was clear all the way to the bottom. When he got there, however, he could hear quite a ruckus through the door. Whizzing, clicking, droning, metal clanking on metal. And then a meaty sort of thud, and a very organic grunt.

John opened the stairwell door wide enough to poke the muzzle of the blaster through it. The narrow opening filled up with metal. John fired, and fired, and fired. Silver plate cascaded to the floor, and the entrance was clear. John pulled the door open, clambering over the fallen metal bodies. John looked up, ready for the next wave.

He looked into Sherlock's face. 

Sherlock's face. It was terrified. It was pale. It was swollen just above the right temple. Its mouth was half-open. In two semicircles around his right ear, instead of dark curls, ran a band of pallid skin. John recognized, instantly, the marks of surgical clippers. Someone had started to shave him for surgery. And, John suddenly noticed, Sherlock was stark naked. As if he'd just leapt right off the operating table and made a run for it. Past him, in the wall opposite, John could see the large metal double doors of the morgue. And he could see them opening. And two cybermen walking through them.

John's heart froze. His throat closed up. His right arm seemed to have turned to stone. He watched helpless as each cyberman laid a heavy metal hand on each of Sherlock's bare shoulders. Then the metal fingers dug into Sherlock's flesh, and he screamed.

"YOUR CONVERSION IS INCOMPLETE."

"JOHN!" Sherlock shouted, as they dragged him back toward the morgue doors.

John's body roared back to life. One shot from the blaster aimed just over Sherlock's left shoulder, one shot aimed just over his right. A kick to gut of the cyberman on the left. A turn to the right to see Sherlock knocking over the other. John blasted a black furrow all along the thing's torso. Swinging back to get the other cyberman, John found his movement interrupted.

Sherlock had seized him by the shoulders. 

"John," Sherlock said, shivering.

His chin was quivering. His eyes were red-rimmed and glistening. His fingers were trembling. Over his right pectoral, a bleeding and diagonal line showed where someone had started what looked like the beginning of a Y incision.

"Oh God," John whispered. "Oh Sherlock. It's all right. You'll be all right now."

Sherlock pulled John forward. Sherlock's arms went around John's shoulders in an iron grip. Sherlock's mouth pressed against his own, lips already parted.

John's mouth opened. Sherlock's tongue rasped against his, searched the cavity of John's mouth. John tottered backward. Sherlock clutched him, kissed him, breathed into him. There was the blaster in his right hand. He couldn't drop that and he couldn't forget he was holding it. Everything else disappeared except for Sherlock's searching and finding. John felt a crack opening inside him, from the back of his throat through the pit of his stomach and straight down to his groin. It was long and jagged but didn't hurt, or else John didn't mind the pain. Through Sherlock, a river was pouring into that fissure. And the only thing in any universe that John wanted at this moment was just to open the chasm and let that river run through it.

Then John heard the sound of a revolver being cocked.

"Get away from him!"

It was a cold, hard, man's voice. Familiar somehow. Close to familiar, but not quite. It grated on every nerve John had.

Sherlock dropped John and spun around toward the voice. John looked past him, blaster raised.

Oh God.

It was himself. The alternative John. Both of them standing there, each pointing his weapon past Sherlock at the other. 

Sherlock's head snapped back toward John. At first, his eyes widened in pure terror. Then John saw them narrowing. He could actually feel Sherlock pull himself back, locking himself in the vault. John could also feel his own throat constricting, and his eyes stinging, as he watched Sherlock's face set like marble.

"Look," John said, desperately. "I know this will sound mad, and it _is_ mad, but--"

From behind, he heard Greg's exasperated voice. "What, those things are  _shapeshifters_  too?"

"Maybe," said the other John. "Or maybe it's a different kind of alien. I just know it isn't me." 

The alternative John lifted the gun. John lifted his blaster.

"Stand aside, Sherlock," said the alternative John. John studied his own alternative face with a certain sardonic detachment. A bit younger, but not much. A few pounds didn't make such a big difference. And the expression...stone-hard and stone-blank except for a kind of madness in the eyes. Was this always what he looked like, when he was about to kill? 

"Stop it!" That was Molly's voice, also behind him. "Nobody shoot anyone until we know what's going on!"

"That moment may never arrive, Molly," Sherlock said. "You, Gavin, and TWO Johns. All we need is for Anderson to walk in and open up a black hole of imbecility from which no deduction could escape."

Molly's face showed pity rather than hurt. Sherlock was trying to show he was all right; but he was absolutely not. His teeth were chattering, and at the corners of his mouth, his lips were turning blue. John looked from him back to Molly and saw her eyes widened. They'd both made the same deduction: before conversion, Sherlock had been put in the morgue. In one of the drawers. 

Sherlock held up a hand. The alternative John obeyed, and lowered his gun--about three inches. Sherlock's eyes scanned John's face, his clothes, the blaster in his hand. Sherlock drew breath to begin.

"It's not a shapeshifter," Sherlock said, though he was shivering. "A shapeshifter would produce an exact likeness, and there are several discrepancies. Lines in the forehead, product in the hair, he's been to a colorist who has failed to completely disguise the gray at the temples. Body shape just slightly off, estimate an extra ten pounds round the waist, looks recent, probably alcohol-related--"

"Sherlock, it's  _me,_ " John groaned. "It's me from the near future, you--and yes, I _have_ put on weight, thank you _so_ much for mentioning it."

The river was gone now, and that chasm inside him was filling up with bile. It hurt, it burned, to be looked at that way. Scrutinized for clues, like a stranger, or a criminal, while this other him looked on, with jealousy burning in his eyes.

Jealousy.

Oh God. In this timeline--

Of course. The unspoken demand, the intensity, the utter lack of doubt or hesitation. That instantaneous fusion. 

It had not been their first kiss. Well, not for Sherlock.

"Time travel," Sherlock said, as if it were the vilest thing he'd ever heard of. "You let ONE time machine into your life and logic never functions again. How am I to know which of the fifteen most probable impossible things has happened?"

Sherlock threw up his hands. John decided someone had to take unilateral action before more cybermen arrived.

"Look, I'm putting the blaster down," he said. "All right? Molly, get Sherlock a blanket, he's hypothermic."

"I don't need a blanket," Sherlock protested.

"Shut up, Sherlock," snapped both Johns.

"Well," Lestrade said. "If he's not John, he's done his homework."

 Molly went up to Lestrade. "There are no blankets down here. Nobody needs them. Let me have your coat."

John watched Greg unbelt the thing and hand it to her. It seemed to him as if they, too, now had a history.

"This is like that Star Trek episode, isn't it," Lestrade said, as Molly brought the coat to Sherlock. "Whom Gods Deploy or whatever. All we have to do is wait for the shapeshifter to get tired of expending all that energy."

Sherlock, struggling into the coat, hissed in annoyance. "He is NOT a shapeshifter, Gerald. Do try to keep up."

"It's Greg," Molly whispered.

"He knows," Lestrade whispered back. 

"All right," said the alternative John. "If you're from the future, how'd you get here?"

"The Doctor brought me," he said.

Sherlock snorted. "Anyone could have given that answer. Ask about something only you know."

The alternative John glanced at Sherlock. 

"That does NOT involve our sex life."

"Damn," said Lestrade, sotto voce.

The alternative John had an idea. "When and where did Sherlock tell me how he survived the Fall?"

John blinked. Then he realized. It was a trick question.

"Never and nowhere," he said.

There was a general groan of refusal. Sherlock's brows contracted and his head drew back. Alternative John shook his head.

"Come on," said an aggrieved Lestrade. "You expect us to believe that?!"

"It's true!" John fired back. "Sherlock never told me how he did it. He started to, but he never told that story, not to me. I mean there's a load of crap up on Anderson's website, but nobody believes _that_. Two years--two bloody years without a word and he just barges in to my engagement dinner and he has never  _once told me how he did it,_ or even given a decent reason as to _why_!" 

John felt his chest heaving. Letting that out had roiled everything inside him. Staring at Sherlock, he felt the anger burn even hotter. And along with it, other flames.

"Well, we've one thing in common," alternative John said. "You're a terrible liar."

"Wait!" John shouted.

"Why?" demanded alternative John. "To see if you can come up with a WORSE lie?"

"I'm--I'm from an alternative timeline. That's why. It's--it just happened differently, in my timeline."

"Oh, like you're from the quantum reality where everyone's even MORE of a dick?" Lestrade said.

"But you said you were from the future," Molly interrupted. "That's very different to being from an alternative--"

"So I made a mistake!" John shouted. "I'm sorry! It's my first day! I mean I don't know how any of this works! I didn't WANT to come here and save humanity! I was sitting at home, minding my own business, hoping for a quiet Christmas and then--all THIS--"

One stairwell door banged open.

Alternative John raised the gun. Molly shrieked.

The other stairwell door banged open.

Each John swiveled toward whichever door was behind him.

From the stairwell nearest John came the man in the brown coat, followed by Harry and Ryder. From the stairwell nearest to Alternative John came the Doctor and Donna. While the two Doctors stared at each other, the two Johns swung back toward each other, weapons drawn.

"Tell you what, Watson," said Donna, into the tense silence. "You really ARE your own worst enemy."

Everyone started shouting at once. They advanced on each other, gesticulating, crowding into an angry knot. Finally the Doctor drowned them all out.

"What are you DOING here?" she demanded. "You're supposed to be in the TARDIS flipping the kill switch!"

"I WAS in the TARDIS," he shouted back. "Till she just...disappeared around me, and left me STANDING there alone on the roof like a sitting duck."

"What--well, where she now?" the Doctor shouted.

"I don't KNOW!"

"Ye GODS, why am I so ANNOYING?" wailed the Doctor, shaking her fists at herself in rage. "Of all the incompetent things I've--wait."

The Doctor was suddenly aquiver with attention. So was the man in the brown suit. Everyone stopped talking.

They could all hear it. _Boom. Boom. Boom._ Coming closer, from both ends of the corridor.

"Oh, fuck," Harry murmured. 

Molly nodded at the morgue doors. "In there."

Sherlock hissed. "NOT in there. That's the conversion station. Last place you want to be when they come for you."

 _Whizz. Click. Whirr_.

Their stainless, shining forms appeared simultaneously at both ends of the corridor. Both Johns, both Doctors, and everyone else turned outward, trying to face the new threat, trying to think of something to do other than sell their lives dearly. 

"Psst!"

John looked toward the sound. Next to the exit to the stairwell, there was a maintenance closet. That door was now open, and in it stood Mrs. Hudson.

"In here!" she whispered, motioning frantically with one arm.

The Doctors looked at her. They looked at the cybermen advancing. They looked at each other.

They said, "RUN!"

Ryder got there first. By the time John reached the closet door, the entrance was so clogged up he almost fell through it.

He landed on the floor of the TARDIS.

John heard the TARDIS doors shut. He heard everyone else's panting and grunting as they picked themselves up from the floor. He heard the _whomp, whomp_ of the central column. He heard the sound of an electric kettle boiling. And he heard the sounds of cybermen banging on the doors.

Both Doctors flew immediately to the console. The man in the brown coat keyed in a very long sequence, muttering to himself all the while. There was a massive beeping sound that made everyone jump. 

"YES!" shouted the man in the brown coat, punching the air. 

_Boom. Boom. Boom. Clank. Clunk._

Silence.

The other Doctor ran to the console. She stared at the screen. She stared at the other doctor. She burst out laughing.

"WE DID IT!"

She and the man in the brown coat embraced. And then Donna ran over to pile on. And then Harry. All of them jumping up and down together.

John pushed himself painfully into a sitting position. He finally let go of the blaster. His eyes traveled to Alternative John, who crouched down near Sherlock. Alternative John was examining him, minutely, with small, precise, determined movements, as Sherlock tried--not very hard--to bat him away.

"Well...so..." Donna was saying, over by the central pillar. "This is  _our_ TARDIS...where's  _your_ TARDIS?"

"It's all the same TARDIS, isn't it?" Harry said.

The man in the brown suit nodded. The Doctor shook her head. Then the man in the brown suit shook his head, and the Doctor nodded.

"Oh, LORD," said Donna, rolling her eyes.

Both Doctors began trying to explain, at the same time, to Harry and Donna, who tried to follow both of them. John knew he had no hope of doing same.

"Tea is ready, Doctor Watson," said an unfamiliar voice, with a vaguely Mediterranean accent.

John lifted his head and gave it a shake.

Sitting by a shelf at the back, pouring water from an electric kettle into a china teacup, was a middle-aged woman with long, curly, hair--dark once, but threaded now with gray. She was wearing a black dress and was swathed about the shoulders and torso with a quite astonishingly enormous shawl. As John stared, this unexpected creature began filling up another cup. Marie looked over at Alternative John.

"You both take your tea the same way, I assume? Milk, no sugar?"

Alternative John swung around. He stared in open astonishment.

"Marie?" Sherlock said, incredulous.

"Sherlock!" she called.

"May I ask--" Sherlock began. "No. I won't give you the satisfaction."

Marie smiled at Sherlock.  "Martha Louise invited me," she said.

"Who?"

Mrs. Hudson let out an outraged gasp. "That's ME, Sherlock. That's my name."

"How?" Sherlock demanded.

"She texted me," said Marie, unperturbed. She reached into her shawl and pulled out a phone. "Four fifteen pm, Hello Marie, the boys are in a bit of a spot, and I think this is right up your alley, can I ask your advice. I reply: Martha dear, always happy to help." And back and forth and back and forth we text, until finally, inside my little tarot reading parlor, materializes the big blue box, and inside it, my dear Martha Louise. You see? There is no mystery."

"How does she even have your number?" Sherlock said, in tones of outrage.

"We meet for tea and Tarot every Thursday afternoon," Marie said lightly. "And often my dear Martha Louise may have some little problem to talk over. I do not always bite, I have many clients and she does have you on call after all; but when I hear from her that she has come into possession of a time machine and wishes to know how to fly it, well how can I resist?"

"How did you even get it down here?" the Doctor demanded. "The place was time-locked."

"I spoke to Martha about this problem," said Marie.

"And I said, 'Well, I'll bet it wasn't time-locked yesterday,'" said Mrs. Hudson. 

"Ah," said both Doctors.

"Well after all, it is a time machine," Mrs. Hudson said. "So we just flew back to yesterday and put the thing in this broom closet. And then all we had to do was wait and listen! Two simple, easy things, neither of which either of the boys does, ever."

There was a silence, and then general laughter.

"Martha Louise Hudson," Sherlock said, when it had died down. "You are a national treasure."

Sherlock rose, somewhat painfully, to his feet. He took a couple of precarious steps toward Mrs. Hudson. He swayed. He began to topple.

John was on his feet in an instant. But Mrs. Hudson was there first. Sherlock collapsed onto her, eyes closed, shuddering.

"There, there," Mrs. Hudson said. She patted his back, impotently. "You'll be all right."

"I'm cold," Sherlock said. His voice sounded like a child's.

Marie and Mrs. Hudson each took an arm and piloted Sherlock into the waiting arms of alternative John. Alternative John walked him back to a sofa which John was noticing for the first time, and they sank down onto it together. John watched Alternative John wrap his arms around Sherlock's shoulders, as Sherlock began to sob.

John almost got up. But the other John looked as if he had it under control. And John had never seen Sherlock cry that way. Not even in Sherrinford. Sherlock sobbing in *anyone's* arms--let alone his own--was not something John could ever have imagined. 

"Tea, John," said Harry's voice.

While the others clustered around the console, Harry handed John his cup of tea. He took it from her as she sat down next to him.

"Well," she said, sipping her own tea. "We made it. Thank God."

John drank his tea, his eyes still on Sherlock. Alternative John was inspecting the shaved section of Sherlock's head, while softly stroking the curls around it.

"Where's Bertie?" Harry asked.

John closed his eyes.

"Never mind," Harry said, quickly. 

"I'm sorry," John whispered.

Harry sighed. "It was his choice. And I think he did it for her, really."

She nodded at Ryder, who was talking and laughing with Donna and the man in the brown coat. Talking about running, it seemed.

"No," John said, still not daring to look at her. "I mean...I'm sorry about last Christmas."

There was a brief silence.

"Do you remember--" John began.

"I do," she said. "But that wasn't you, was it? You're from an alternative."

After another nearly unbearable silence, John said, "I don't understand how you can still be speaking to me. I mean--to him."

John nodded toward his alternative self. He regretted it instantly. His alternative self had taken off his shirt and undone the trenchcoat. They were wrapped in the same thermal blanket now, skin to skin. Kangaroo contact. A sound decision, medically. Warm him up, skin to skin.

He saw his alternative self kiss Sherlock on the mouth. So gently, so tenderly. The sight of it tightened all of John's insides into knots.

"It'll be all right," Harry said, following his gaze. "Your work here is done. You and your Doctor will be back in your own timeline soon, with your own Sherlock."

John felt a sudden urge to cry. It turned quickly into an urge to vomit. Then it became an urge to speak.

"I'm not gay," he said.

Harry looked at him. "What?"

"In my own timeline. I'm not gay."

Harry stared back at him. She looked less friendly.

"The funny thing is," she said, "that you used to say that in this timeline too. You said it to him the day you met. You've been saying it since you were twelve years old."

She reached for the teacup. 

"Do you know what I hear when you say 'I'm not gay'?" she said, harshly.

"I don't know what you mean."

"I hear, 'I'm not disobedient. I'm not disrespectful. I don't cry. I'm a good little soldier. I'm a good little boy. I love you, Daddy. I'm not _like_ Harry.' "

John set his cup and saucer down. He was afraid he might break something.

"Maybe that's not what you mean, but that's what I hear." She took a deep breath. "So if you need to go on saying it, then say it. But say it to someone else, John. Not to me."

John resisted the urge to get up and move away. He put himself through the long, tense silence.

"I'm sorry, Harry," he said. "I should have thought."

"Yes, well." She waved it away. "It's all right. Don't worry about it."

They sat together in silence for a bit, as Marie and Ryder knelt down on the floor and began inspecting a deck of cards together.

"Can I ask you a question, Harry?" John said, wrenching himself back to look at her. 

"Of course," Harry answered, sipping her tea.

"How did we--did--you and he--get past it?" John said. "Last Christmas, I mean."

"I don't know," Harry shrugged. "You were a mess, you needed help, I came out to offer it, and you accepted it. And then eventually...I forgave you. We forgave each other. I mean, it helped that you finally figured out that I wasn't driving the night of the crash."

John stared at her. "You weren't?"

Harry opened her collar and traced the scar on her neck with one finger. "You see, but you do not observe."

"Oh my God," John muttered. "They're on the wrong side. You were in the passenger seat."

Harry sighed.

"Wrong in this timeline, wrong in the other," John murmured to himself.

"I was wrong too, for a long time," Harry said. "You wanted me to be guilty, and I suppose I wanted myself to be guilty too. Both of us missed her. Both of us wanted someone to blame. And anyway, that wasn't really what you held against me. There were so, so many, so much smaller things. I think it was--convenient--for both of us to have just one unforgivable thing between us. It allowed me to decide I was unredeemable. And that allowed me to just stop trying. For a while."

They sipped their tea in silence.

"It's nice, this," Harry said. "Just sitting and talking. In my timeline we don't do this much. I've got my practice, and you've got your cases, and when we're not working you're usually with him." She nodded at alternative John and Sherlock; but John didn't want to look at them.

"How's Clara?" John said.

"Dead," Harry replied.

"How?" John said.

"Long story," Harry answered.

Which she clearly did not want to tell. _You're not asking the right questions, Watson_ , said a voice in his head. _This is possibly your last chance to speak with her. You don't know if she'll be here when you get home_.

John said, slowly, "I never would have thought you could forgive me for what I--he--did to you last Christmas."

"Of course not," Harry said. "Dad blamed us for everything and forgave us for nothing. Whatever Mum forgave, Dad would punish us for. We were raised to think we were unforgivable. What I learned about this I had to learn on my own. It took a long time and I paid a lot of therapists."

"How do you...forgive...someone?"

The sadness in Harry's eyes as he asked her that brought him right back to childhood. She knew it was a serious question. She probably had some idea of why.

"What keeps us from forgiving each other," she sighed, "is fear. That's what I believe. You can't forgive someone you're afraid of. So it's a...collaboration. The other person has to make you know you're safe with them. Then you can forgive. If you try to forgive before that, you just get crushed. For instance, I haven't forgiven Dad. I'm still afraid of him. And I couldn't forgive Clara until after she died. Until that point, I was never going to be safe with her."

"Safe," John repeated, hollowly.

He risked a glance at Sherlock. His eyes were closed now, his head leaned on alternative John's shoulder, the thermal blanket pulled tightly around them. His own Sherlock. His own Sherlock never did that. His own Sherlock...that unchecked desire, the torrential feeling, the instantaneous connection he had felt when Sherlock just leaned toward him and began that kiss, John would never feel again.

He was vexed to feel the tears coming.

"What is it, John?" Harry said, softly. 

"In my timeline, I..." he began. 

"You can tell me," Harry said. 

John's hands crept into his lap. One hand tightened on the other. He suppressed a sob. He shook his head.

"I've done something very bad," he said, in a small voice.

While the celebration proceeded, he and Harry just sat in their silence. 

"Can you tell me what it was?" Harry said, quietly.

John compressed his lips. He shook his head.

"Is it to do with Sherlock?" she asked.

John nodded. He had so many questions, and he could not ask her any of them. She wouldn't know how to help him. The John she knew was over there with Sherlock already. The John she knew had never hit Sherlock. The John she knew could never have done that. That kiss John was remembering, burningly, achingly, was for the John who could never have done that, from the Sherlock who couldn't believe that someone would abandon a friend for two years and not even tell him why.

"To be forgiven," Harry said, slowly. "By Harry Watson. First: accept that you can't earn forgiveness. It's given or not given and it isn't up to you. Second: Forget justice. You can't restore what you've broken, you can't wipe away what you've done. There's no clean slate. You can't make what you did better; you can't make it go away."

"So then what do you do?" John said.

"You live it down." 

Harry glanced over at Ryder, now seated between Donna and the man in the brown coat, watching Marie lay out a complicated Tarot spread on the TARDIS floor.

"You get up day after day and do your best. You try to do good in the world. You try to be kind. Grain by grain you live it down. That's all you can do."

"Watson."

John looked up. He was looking at the Doctor through tears in his eyes.

"It's time to go."

John stood up.

"I want to go home," he said, trying not to sound like a whining child. "I want my own Sherlock and my own house and my own daughter and my own grief and my own sins and my own bed. I don't care that it's not perfect. I made it and it's my responsibility. I want to go home and--and live with it. Please let me do that. Please let me go. I don't want any more of Christmas past."

The Doctor became unnervingly quiet. The place, despite the noise from the revelers around the console, became strangely still.

"You're right," the Doctor said. "No more Christmas past."

"Thank God for that," John muttered.

"I'll take you home, Watson," the Doctor said. "To Christmas present."

"Thank you," said John, with a sigh.

"Via Christmas Yet To Come."

"NO!"

"You'll like it," said the Doctor, taking John by the arm. "I mean, you won't like it. But it'll be good for you."

END CHAPTER

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is part of the timeline established in "Empty Houses," and is basically a continuation of "Recovery," which ends with everyone hopping into the TARDIS to go fight the cybermen. Ryder, Bertie Kingfisher, and Marie are characters from "Young Men Carbuncular."


	6. THE SECRET SISTER

John walked out of the little blue box into a large gray box.

It was not so much a box as a roughly circular open space made of rough gray concrete slabs, standing up on end like dominoes. It felt like a box because of the lack of windows, the marble floor, and the heavy, concrete ceiling. Apart from one central skylight which glowed like a malevolent artificial eye, the only lighting came from  strips of concealed halogen bulbs at the tops and bottoms of the slabs. No visible doors. In fact no obvious exits at all. It was bisected with a wall of glass, three huge panes helt together by iron bars. A few feet beyond the glass, there was a white line drawn on the concrete paving, with a warning (upside down, but easy enough to read) to maintain a distance of at least three feet. Beyond that, a wooden bench had been placed near one of the walls

John turned around.

Behind him was what looked like a single bed and an end table and stool, built out of the same concrete slabs. On top of the table lay a violin and a bow. And sitting on the bed, resting her elbows on her knees and her chin in her hands, looking right at him, was Eurus Holmes.

"Oh no," John shouted, whirling around and grabbing for the handles on the blue box. "No, no no no no no NO!"

The doors remained closed, despite John's best efforts. The Doctor watched him pull at them.

"Multiphasal simultaneity has been re-established, Watson," said the Doctor. "She can't see or hear or touch or strangle you."

"Why," John muttered, between gritted teeth, "have you brought me to the WORST bloody PLACE on EARTH?"

"This is YOUR current timeline," the Doctor said. "That's not my fault."

John scrutinized Eurus's face. Her hair was still dark, still worn in Ophelia-style disheveled ringlets, but now threaded with gray and white hairs. Her white pajamas were still pristine.

"Near future?" he said.

"Ten years on from where I met you," the Doctor confirmed. 

"And she's still here?"

Eurus stood up. She lifted the violin in one hand and the bow in the other. She looked, for a moment, as if she were about to play. Then, she turned away and paced toward the opposite slab, slowly, as if in a trance. The Doctor watched her. As Eurus began to pace along the walls, looking straight ahead of her, the Doctor sat down on the bed, watching her.

"She's still here," the Doctor sighed.

The Doctor said it with a sorrow unlike any of her usual emotions. She watched Eurus as you might watch a loved one in a locked ward--following with her eyes, changing position as Eurus made the circuit, studying her with a mixture of regret and pain.

"Would have thought she'd escaped by now," John said. "With her magical powers of manipulation."

Without taking her eyes off Eurus's white and drifting form, the Doctor said, "You don't believe in her transformation?"

John leaned against the blue box, folding his arms.

"Sherlock does," he said.

"I asked about you."

John looked into Eurus's eyes. They seemed vacant, blank like her face. There was no longer anything terrifying about it. But then again, she was alone. He'd never seen her before when she thought she was alone.

"She tried to force me to execute a hostage," John said. "She drove a man to shoot himself. She killed four people in cold blood. She tortured Sherlock and she put me in a well. And then we found out that as a child, she'd killed a child, because Sherlock wasn't paying her enough attention or something. No, I don't believe in her _transformation_."

John heard an automatic door hissing open. He turned to look.

At the end of the corridor, stepping out of that disappearing oblong of light from the lift, was Sherlock. He carried his violin case in one hand. Sherlock, too, was going gray--at the temples, first. His face was thinner, more deeply lined; the cheekbones sharper, the eyes brighter. Still handsome. Devastatingly, in a plum silk shirt and a black suit that had been perfectly tailored. John smiled, in spite of everything. It was still capable of amusing him, Sherlock's vanity. He claimed to hate the cameras; but oh, did he dress for them.

"Merry Christmas, Eurus," said Sherlock. "Many happy returns and so on."

He waited, in the exact center of the white line, the points of his polished black shoes just touching the outer edge. Eurus stopped her pacing. She threw him an angry glance. She rushed to the table, whipped up the violin and bow, and played a pointed, staccato, bitterly ironic snatch of "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen."

"Oh, come on," said Sherlock, reproachfully. "If you're going to be this way, what's the point of..."

Sherlock trailed off, making a gesture of frustration with one hand as Eurus flung the violin and bow down on the bed. She spun on her heel and walked away, standing with her face against the wall farthest from Sherlock.

Sherlock set his violin case down on one of the benches. John watched the lines deepen at the corners of Sherlock's eyes, as he tried to control his face. He was hurt; John could see that. At least he thought he could see it. He wasn't sure of anything any more.

"We could speak," Sherlock said, to Eurus's rigid back. "I really think I would survive it."

Eurus remained as silent and unmoving as marble.

Sherlock scratched the back of his head, nervously. He cleared his throat. 

"Mummy and Daddy send their love," he said.

Eurus made a sound. It was a high, shrill, sharp sound. The cry of an animal, and not a happy animal.

"They do care, Eurus. They simply find it increasingly difficult, physically, to make the journey to Sherrinford."

Eurus finally turned. She walked deliberately, sulkily, over to the bed, and sat down on it. One hand played with the violin bow, the way it might have played with the hilt of a sword.

"Mycroft sends his, too, of course," said Sherlock. 

Eurus very nearly cracked a smile. Sherlock smiled for her.

"He's on another top-secret mission--won't tell me where, but I'm fairly certain it's one of the Americas. Our brother has not yet accepted the fact that when two siblings are at each other's throats, often the best thing the mother can do is stay out of it. We won't be the ones to end that civil war."

Eurus looked at Sherlock. John couldn't read her expression; but it evidently meant something to her brother. 

"No," Sherlock sighed. "You're right. Neither will the Americans."

Eurus picked up the violin. John didn't recognize the song she played, though it sounded much more contemporary than he would have expected. He heard the Doctor laugh. When he turned she was putting a hand up to her face to hide a smile.

"So what is it, then?" John demanded. 

"Robert Palmer, 'Bad Case of Loving You,' " said the Doctor. "You know. 'Doctor, doctor, give me the news, I got a...' "

John turned away with a curse. Eurus had stopped playing. Sherlock had crossed the white line. He was holding up a glossy bit of cardstock, on which was a photo of...of himself, bald as an egg, and a flaxen-haired ten-year-old girl that he assumed was Rosie. HAPPY HOLIDAYS FROM THE WATSONS was printed in holly-green letters across the top.

"Apart from this...object," Sherlock said, with a grimace, "I've had no news from John this year. Mycroft updates me from time to time; but otherwise, all I have to go on is his nearly-dormant blog and something known to the damned as an annual Christmas newsletter."

Sherlock flung the card over his shoulder. It fluttered gently through the air, mocking the vehemence of his gesture. John looked at the sadness in Sherlock's eyes, and felt a lump rise in his throat. Eurus just started playing again, this time something baroque and mathematical and murderous in its precision.

"Yes, very funny," said Sherlock, with a sigh. "Still, not quite as funny as it was last year. Got anything _new_?"

Eurus slid off the bed. She pattered, in her ballet slippers, up to the glass. She lifted the violin, shook her hair out of her face, and began.

Sherlock watched her for a few moments. His eyes filled with tears. John had to admit he did not know why. It didn't sound like sad music to him. It was dissonant, and fast, and it looked very difficult--a lot of going up and down the neck, interrupted with strange knockings and pluckings and things he had not known you could use a violin to do.

He looked over at the Doctor. She was crying too.

"Doctor?" John said, honestly confused. "DOCTOR."

The Doctor seemed to snap out of some sort of daydream. Her eyes, turned on John's, were still wet.

"I'm sorry," the Doctor said, gesturing at the tears still beading on her lashes. "It's just...she reminds me so much of...of a very old friend of mine."

"Was this friend of yours an amoral homicidal sociopathic genius with a taste for sadism?" John said.

The Doctor, without a trace of irony, sighed and said, "Oh yes."

Eurus's song continued. Sherlock had taken his violin out of the case and put it under his chin, but he seemed to still be searching for an opening.

"Her name...well, she goes by Missy now, but that's not her real name, any more than my real name is Doctor. It's short for 'mistress.' "

"Is it really," said John, thinking very angry thoughts about Irene Adler.

"It used to be 'Master,' " said the Doctor. "The Master was a right mess. Went mad hundreds of years ago and became more bonkers with each regeneration. You know he was your prime minister, for a while. Did no end of damage. Refused to regenerate after that one; I thought he was gone. But no. Back he came, and turned nearly everyone on earth into a clone of himself. Almost killed Donna. Actually did kill me. The--the other me you met, in the brown suit, he killed that me. And as Missy...well, the things she did don't bear repeating. She became a threat to existence itself, really. And yet..."

The Doctor listened to the music for a few moments, sadly.

"When she was finally apprehended, I couldn't bear to have any part in killing her," said the Doctor, slowly, sadly, as if John weren't even in the room. She was watching Eurus's fingers make their repeated runs up the neck of the violin. "But she was a menace to the entire human race, to the planet earth, and to the entire universe.  So I put her in a box and swore to guard her for a thousand years."

John's eyes traveled, involuntarily, to Sherlock--rooted there on the other side of the glass, bow at the ready, as if he had been poured out of the same concrete as the floor he stood on.

"I'd never have stuck it, of course," said the Doctor. "This is the problem with prison, Watson. You make someone a prisoner, you make yourself her jailer. Neither of you will ever be free again."

Sherlock made an attempt at joining in; but he missed a chance, and settled back to wait for another opening. His eyes were fixed on Eurus's hands.

"The correspondences are remarkable," the Doctor went on, softly, gazing at Eurus. "Missy loves music too. She prefers the piano. Sorry. You don't care. Only...only this is what I brought you here to see."

"What is?" John said. "What is it about this...sad...performance that is supposed to be of use to me?"

Sherlock took a sudden deep breath and gave the strings a quick slash with the bow. He launched into the stream of music, alternately clashing and harmonizing as he splashed his way in.

The Doctor shook her head slowly. And then, in a half-murmur, as if speaking to herself, she began.

"We all have someone like her," she breathed. "You, Sherlock, and I. Each of us has his own version of her--this lost, dark sister, languishing just beyond the circle of attention. Just beyond the edges of the pool of light in which each of us moves. That other half of who we were, who we're afraid we might one day become. For me it's Missy. For Sherlock it's Eurus. For you it's Harry. Forever in the dark, the secret sister, serving time for crimes known and unknown, done and yet to do. We can't let go of her. Who else knows us as well? Who else do we need more desperately than she who was with us from the beginning, witnessing to what we can't remember and can't escape? We know she's unredeemable. That if she wasn't born bad, she was in some way...marred...so that neither you nor I nor anyone in the universe is ever truly safe from her. And yet we can't accept it. We continue trying. We believe we're making progress. We think we see a glimmer. We hope--from a safe distance. From the other side of the glass."

A burst of music drew the Doctor's attention back to Sherlock. He was keeping up. But Eurus pushed the tempo faster and faster. Sweat broke out on his forehead. His bow hand had come to resemble a claw.

"I'm still trying to...to understand my own situation," said the Doctor, with a kind of embarrassment. "I can't relinquish her and I can't reunite with her. There's so much of myself in her, and yet there will never be enough. I thought...after she regenerated as Missy...that perhaps it meant she was ready to change. I was wrong. I think. Was I? Because...here I am." She gestured at her own body, baffled. "Am I... _becoming_ her? Or trying to make her part of myself? Is that why...oh, I don't know."

The Doctor hopped off the bed, and began to pace.

"It's what drew me to you in the first place," the Doctor said. "That we shared this strange, strange thing. The secret sister. Missy, and Eurus, and...and yours, Watson. I don't know why, but yours is the only one who is ever recovered. The only one who--in the alternatives--drags herself back to the light."

The Doctor looked from Sherlock to Eurus. Eurus showed no signs of slowing down. Her expression had become manic and, John felt, malignant.

"I've said...well, I never actually SAID this, but I did strongly imply it," the Doctor said, letting one hand flutter despondently through the air. "I let you think that this journey was all about you, about cheering you up and showing you how loved you are--how loved you were, from the beginning, in the alternatives. I thought it might make things...better for you, when you go back to your current timeline. But in fact it's just as much about me. I...I knew you and Harry had come back from all this," she said, gesturing at the cell, at the two dark-haired middle-aged siblings trying, apparently, to play each other into an early grave. "I wanted to show you how you had done it, but I also just...wanted...to _see_ how you had done it. To learn how to do it. In case I will ever have another chance to do it myself."

Eurus's bow lifted off the strings. Sherlock's did the same. They stared at each other for a long moment. Then Eurus began again, slower this time. Long, drawn-out, lugubrious chords.

"But I haven't done it," John said. "Not in this timeline. Harry wasn't in that photo. She's not in ANY of my photos. I don't...when you turned up, it seems like years ago, you asked me if I was an only child and I couldn't answer. I don't remember anything about her except what you've shown me tonight. She's not...here...and yet she's also not NOT here."

The Doctor nodded.

"What does that MEAN?" John said.

And he really wanted to know. Not because he missed Harry, or because he was lonely for his mum, for his childhood, for all his lost memories--though all that, he admitted to himself, was true. He wanted to know because he was looking at Sherlock and realizing that as long as Eurus was locked in this cage, Sherlock would be locked in there too, pinned down on the other side of the glass. Trying to make sense of the sister he couldn't remember. Trying to redeem someone unredeemable.

"I did some research," said the Doctor, sadly. "Before I appeared on your hearth-rug. I've been through...so many alternative versions of your timeline. And I've noticed something curious."

"Yes?" John said, impatiently.

"In some of the alternatives, you reconnect with Harry," the Doctor went on. "And in some of the alternatives, Sherlock reconnects with Eurus. But never both at the same time. Either Harry comes back into your life, or Eurus comes back into his. Each of you has one of these lost secret sisters. But in any given timeline, only one of them emerges from the darkness."

John's eyes narrowed as he looked at Eurus's dark, silver-threaded, curly locks.

"Are you saying," he said, slowly, "that Harry and Eurus are the same _person_?"

The Doctor shook her head, vigorously. "No. Oh no. Totally different individuals. Be reasonable, Watson. Harry's got her own problems but you must agree they're not like Eurus's."

"I must," John said, with a sigh.

"What I mean is..." The Doctor's hands fluttered into the air, as the chords dragged on, Eurus and Sherlock trading them across the transparent barrier. "It appears that in each of your timelines, there is...there is only one _spot_  for this secret sister. Only one of them can step into the light, if you take my meaning. If Harry's in...in that spot...then Eurus can't be. And vice versa. So...Harry's in your current timeline, but she's not _perceptible_ to you, she's in the dark part of it. The unremembered part. And Eurus is in the light. And then in the alternatives--the others we've been visiting--Harry's in the light and Eurus is somehow...out there in the dark...but no one remembers her. I don't know if I can explain it properly. I don't even know if it's true. It's just a theory I have. But--I mean--what do you think, Watson?"

"I think I've been hanging around you for too long," said John.

"Because?"

"Because what you just said actually makes some sense to me," he replied. 

The Doctor smiled. "Oh really? Brilliant!"

John noticed that the music had stopped. Sherlock and Eurus faced each other, arms dangling, violin from one and bow from the other. Both breathing hard, both spent.

Eurus lifted the violin again. 

Sherlock groaned. "Really?"

And she was away. And he, gritting his teeth, lifted his own instrument and went chasing after her.

"How long do these visits last?" John said, heavily.

The Doctor sighed. "It depends. If she doesn't play for him, not long. If she does, hours. He doesn't eat, he doesn't drink, he just stands there playing the violin with her."

"And how often does he visit?"

"Her birthday, usually Easter, and always Christmas. Every year since he found out about her, he's out here bright and early Christmas morning."

"Except this year."

The Doctor looked at him as if he were mad. "I'm sorry?"

"Sorry, I don't mean--this year we're looking at. I mean the year we started from. He's not at Sherrinford this year, he's on a case."

The Doctor crossed one leg over the other, resting one elbow on her elevated knee and placing a finger against her lips, meditatively.

" _Is_ he, Doctor?" she said. "Is he _really_?"

John felt the familiar explosion of mingled comprehension and self-disgust.

"Oh GOD," he groaned.

"And we've arrived at last," said the Doctor.

"He's not on a case. He's spending Christmas at Sherrinford. He lied to me about it because--well. Because he lies to me. And because he knows I think Eurus is a fucking monster who should be shoved down a well."

"He might perhaps phrase it differently but yes, I believe he has deduced something along those lines," said the Doctor. 

"I KNEW he didn't want me to come with him," John cried, punching the air as if it were arguing with him. "I KNEW IT. I just...I thought he was ditching me. I didn't...well I couldn't have imagined THIS."

"But now you can," said the Doctor, with a smile.

"Yes," John bit off.

He strode up to the glass. He put his face right up to it. When his face started going through the glass, he pulled it back. He stared at Sherlock, who continued not to see him.

"Right," he said, thrusting a finger at Sherlock, who was still madly scraping away at the violin. "You will NOT get rid of me so easily."

He spun around, lunging at the oblivious Eurus. "And _neither will you_!"

He tore himself away from her maddened eyes, and marched back toward the blue box.

"Open it," he barked. 

"I beg your pardon?" said the Doctor. 

"We're going home," he said. "Back to Christmas present. I'm through mucking about with alternatives. _Sherlock_ may not have been out on a case tonight; but _I_ have. And I think," he said, drawing himself up and giving her a crooked but proud little smile, "that I've just cracked it."

The double doors of the blue box flew open. The Doctor bowed slightly, sweeping one arm toward the entrance.

"After you," she said. "Doctor."

END CHAPTER

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we're now in the canon timeline, projected ten years forward.


	7. MISS UNDERSTOOD

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is the last big plot chapter. There will be an epilogue.

John Watson woke up at what he considered an unfairly early hour. Five a.m. would be unjust even on an ordinary weekday; on Christmas Day it was downright oppressive. But one couldn't just like there and let Rosie cry. Nor could one ask one's dead wife to get up and tend to her. One's dead wife entered into one's waking life very rarely now, though she still appeared frequently in one's dreams.

Rosie was seated in her high chair and enjoying her oatmeal before John had a moment to thrust his hands into the pockets of his dressing gown and discover an envelope in one of them. 

He leaned against the counter, listening to Rosie babble and keeping one eye on her while scanning the envelope. It was addressed to "Watson," in pencil. The envelope itself he recognized from the packet of them he kept on the kitchen counter for paying bills with. The handwriting looked completely foreign to him. It was slightly too fat, and too soft, for an ordinary note or letter. He turned it over, looking for clues--from the flap on the back, the smell of the glue. None came to him. That was really Sherlock's department anyway, wasn't it. 

There were whole days, lately, when he barely gave Sherlock a thought. And then there were days like this one, when the thoughts would come, each pricking him with its tiny dagger, each tattooing that sting into the corners of his eyes.

John tore the envelope open. 

Inside was a scrap of fabric covered with embroidery. It was the insignia from an army lieutenant's jacket--an old one, and one that had not been very carefully stored. Folded around it was a sheet of his own notepaper. On the paper were scrawled a few sentences in that same unfamiliar handwriting. They read: 

"GOOD MORNING WATSON. COMPLIMENTS OF THE SEASON. IT WASN'T A DREAM. RYDER KINGFISHER WANTS YOU TO HAVE THIS. CHRISTMAS TEMPORAL EFFECT IN OPERATION TILL MIDNIGHT TONIGHT. CHEERIO. THE DOCTOR."

"Oh, CHRIST," John said, glancing between the insignia in one hand and the letter in the other. Everything came flooding back to him so fast it seemed that the kitchen floor he was standing on had started to shake and ripple with the impact. He had to get to Sherlock--right away. He didn't know how long he had before Sherlock would set off for Sherrinford. What if he was already airborne? Would John be able to catch him in time? 

John stuffed the insignia and the note back into his dressing gown pockets. He was tearing around the kitchen looking for his keys when a burble from Rosie stopped him cold.

"SITTER!" John shouted, so loudly and bitterly that Rosie began to cry.

"Oh no," John said, coming back to the high chair. "Come here, Rosamuffin, it's all right."

John unbuckled Rosie and took her in his arms. She resisted, squalling, for a few moments; but as he rubbed her back, she relaxed, folding her limbs around him and laying her head on his shoulder. John let himself stand still for a moment, swaying just enough to calm her down, stroking her back, shushing her. He had learned somehow to give these tasks the time they required, to stop his mind from running after all the things he wasn't doing. He had learned to just let himself feel her rest her weight on him, to feel himself holding her up, and to recognize that these were actually the best moments of his day. 

He heard the doorbell ring.

Carrying Rosie carefully down the stairs, John looked through the peephole on the front door. They were useless, these peepholes, but at least he could tell that the person on the other side was a woman in her fifties, with short and spiky gray hair, in a black cloth coat with a long striped scarf wrapped around her neck. She was not apparently carrying weapons of any kind. He set Rosie down on the blanket which was now permanently spread out on the floor, and went to open the door.

The woman on the doorstep shoved her hands deeper into her coat pockets, tensed her shoulders, and said, "John. Merry Christmas. May I come in?"

John studied her face for a moment.

"Harry?" he said.

"Correct," Harry replied.

"Come in," John said, stepping back.

Harry unwound the scarf from around her neck and tossed it onto the sofa. Rose noticed it with delight, and began pushing herself up to a standing position. 

"So," Harry began. "Just so you know, I'm--"

"No--no don't tell me, I'm keen to guess," John said. "Near future...annnnnnd..." He gestured at his own neck. "No scars...so...ALSO from an alternative timeline? I mean--alternative to the last alternative."

"Ten points to Gryffindor," said Harry. "Actually I have scars in this one too, they're just--"

Harry broke off the moment she caught sight of Rosie, who was now crouched by the sofa, grabbing the striped scarf with both fists and pulling it down onto the floor.

"Rachel!"

Harry divested herself, with surprising speed, of her coat and gloves, and swooped down on Rosie. She scooped Rosie up, set Rosie astride her hip, and disentangled the scarf from her grip all in one movement. As the scarf floated back down to the floor, Harry offered Rosie a finger to grab. Having thus coaxed her into something like a dance hold, Harry began swaying gently back and forth, looking into Rachel's round little face. "Hey hey Ray-ray! It's your Aunt Harriet!"

Rosie, oddly, seemed not to find this discomfiting at all. "Ray Ray!" she babbled back, smiling.

"Her name's Rosie," John said, a bit stiffly. "In this timeline." 

"My apologies," Harry said. She cocked her head, studying Rosie's face with a look that Rosie tried, hilariously, to mirror. "It's funny. She does look exactly like Rachel. I mean I suppose that makes sense. She's the same child, after all. Only in my timeline, you named her and not Mary."

Harry finally looked up at John's face, and manifested the first signs of uncertainty since their greeting at the door. "Is this...all right? Do you mind my--"

"No," John said. Because he didn't mind, exactly; he couldn't quite put his finger on what he felt at the moment. "Would you like some tea?" he offered.

"I'm fine, thanks," Harry said, still swaying, more subtly. "I don't want to slow you down."

"'Slow me down?"

"You're on your way to Baker Street, aren't you?"

John blinked. "I was, but I--"

"--just realized that you can't bring Rosie to Sherrinford and you'll never find a sitter on Christmas Day. Well, here I am, John. Go. Just make sure you get back by midnight, before I turn into a pumpkin." Harry turned back to Rosie. "Yes!" she said, to Rosie. "At midnight I turn into a big old rolly pumpkin!"

Rosie looked up at Harry. "Rosie punkin!" she squealed.

John laughed. So did Harry. It felt good.

"You won't literally turn into a pumpkin," John said.

"No."

"Because honestly that wouldn't even be the strangest thing that's happened to me in the past 24 hours."

"I know. But no, I won't be envegetabled. I'll just disappear. Along with my timeline."

They looked at each other. They both laughed. Then they both stopped.

"She can be a bit--" John began.

"She'll be fine," Harry said. "I've been sober for twelve years and I've been dealing with Rachel--I mean Rosie--for ten. There is nothing she can throw at me, figuratively or literally, that I won't have seen before." Harry shifted Rachel slightly, resettling her weight with that automatic, unthinking, yet unerringly accurate motion that he had seen Mary use so often. "Just show me where you keep everything. I don't know where anything is over here."

John nodded, and let the way up the stairs to the nursery. Directing her to the chest of drawers on which they had placed the changing pad, John said--as casually as he could make it sound--"So in your timeline...I'm not living here?"

"Not by the time I start sitting for Rachel," Harry said, following John with her eyes as he opened the drawers: nappies, wipes, cream in case of diaper rash. "You're back in Baker Street by then."

John stopped, one hand frozen over the crib railing, unable to think of what he had wanted to tell Harry about naptime. _Back in Baker Street._

Well, why not? If things worked out today. Why not?

His stomach contracted as he remembered why not.

"And in your timeline," John said, turning away from the crib. "Is Mary still alive?"

Harry took a deep breath.

"She is," Harry said. 

John's heart throbbed in pain.

"And our daughter is how old?"

"Ten and a bit."

John felt his teeth grind as his jaw clenched.

"I wish I could have seen that," he said. "Just--to see them together, nine years on. To see what it would have been like." 

Harry looked away.

"What?" John demanded.

"Is Rosie still taking a bottle?" Harry said, carrying Rosie toward the door.

"Stop right there and look at me, Harry," John said.

Harry did, with an expression of exhaustion and dread.

"What's the matter with your timeline?"

Harry laughed. "Where should I begin?"

"I mean what's the matter with Mary? Because it's obviously something."

Harry sighed, then finally capitulated.

"John, in my new and improved timeline, Mary is a very nasty piece of work." 

John let out a noise of exasperation. "I know that's what everyone thinks about her," he began. "Because of what happened with Sherlock. But she was--"

"No, John. I know what I'm talking about." She said it with such finality that even Rosie looked at her in surprise. "I don't know how or why, but when Bowtie Boy went back on my timeline and prevented the car crash, he somehow also turned Mary into a bloody psychopath. Shooting Sherlock was just the beginning. In my timeline, she's in prison. In my timeline, that's where she should be."

John found himself rejecting this speech of Harry's with every cell in his body. "That's not fair. You don't know her. You don't know what she's been through, or how hard she's worked to--"

"Excuse me, I DO know," Harry replied, in a low, tense voice. She glanced at Rosie, and tried to keep her tone neutral. "I know more about her back story than you do, John--and yes. It's awful. But you know what, there is a limit to how long you can let your horrible bringing-up explain your horrible adult behavior. Everyone arrives at adulthood holding a bag of shit and it's up to you what you do with it. And the cycle of abuse is a thing and I get that but you don't have to deal out what you were dealt. I've been in AA for a long time, I've met a lot of people doing a lot more with a lot less than she was given. I know lawyers and doctors and teachers who spend their whole lives trying to protect people from the things they were never safe from and give children the love and security they were never given. The cycle will always continue somewhere but you don't have to be the one who continues it."

Rosie blinked up at her, confused but not yet upset. John, on the other hand, felt as if his entire chest cavity had suddenly become inflamed.

"I'm sorry," he said, bitingly. "Are we talking about Mary now, or are we talking about me?"

Rosie looked at him burst into tears.

Harry immediately went to John, holding Rosie out to him. John waved Harry away. If he held Rosie she would feel how angry he was, and that would only make her more upset. Harry seemed to understand. At least, she settled Rosie back down on her other hip.

"I was talking about myself, actually," Harry said. "But we could certainly make this about you, if you like. We took all the same shit from the same two people."

For a little while, all any of them heard was Rosie's sobs diminishing, and finally trailing off into a sigh. John looked at Harry over Rosie's shoulder, and let the despair just fill the pit of his stomach.

"Come on," Harry said, finally. "You need to get going, and we'll be fine. You'll be just fine with your crazy Aunt Harriet," Harry said, raising her voice to that baby-soothing pitch. "Won't you, sweetheart?"

"Yes!" Rosie cried.

Still feeling guilty, John crossed the hall to his own room and began assembling the usual expedition pack. Keys, mobile, medikit, leather jacket, firearm. This last had to be taken out of the combination safe concealed behind the doors of a wardrobe. He wondered if, even if it became possible, he could justify moving back to Baker Street. Sherlock did not understand the first thing about gun safety.

Not the question of the moment, John.

John returned to the nursery. Rosie was now on the floor with Harry, and they were having a bit of a tug of war with one of Rosie's early Christmas presents. It was a soft toy, a stuffed elephant with gray leathery skin. Rosie loved chewing on the end of its trunk. She had tried to say its name, but could only get as far as "effna."

He felt chills. He couldn't understand why. Harry looked up and saw his face.

"Deja vu," she said. "Comes with the time travel."

"Makes sense," John heard himself saying. "Where is the Doctor, anyway?"

"They and Donna are away after her TARDIS," Harry said.

"TARDIS?" John repeated.

"TARDIS, yes. Time and relative dimension in space. The blue box thing."

"Why does it look like a--"

"It has a chameleon feature where it's supposed to be able to take whatever shape or size necessary to blend in with its surrounding wherever it lands. The thing broke years ago and the TARDIS now permanently looks like a police callbox from the 1960s."

"So...they're looking for the TARDIS... _in_ the TARDIS."

"I know!" Harry said, her free hand gesturing in exasperation. "I mean I am a kind of...honorary timelord, now, and sometimes I still don't understand what the Doctor's on about. But evidently, your coming in on the Donna's Doctor's alternative created two simulatneous iterations of the TARDIS, and if that goes on for very long, you know, space time vortexes and paradoxes and universe-ending anomalies and whatnot arise."

John struggled to take this in. Harry reached into her trouser pocket, pulled out her mobile, fiddled with it, and held up the screen. "Is this still your number?"

"Yes," John said, feeling even more chilled.

"Right then," Harry said, letting go of the elephant and keying in a text message. "Now you have mine. If you're going, go."

He looked at her. There were too many feelings. 

"I don't know what to say," he finally said.

"You could always say thank you," she answered.

John looked back at her, trying not to show the flash of resentment he knew he shouldn't be feeling.

"I'll be back before midnight," he said.

"Thanks," Harry replied.

***

 Sherlock had woken this early on Christmas morning for the express purpose of giving himself time to pack.  _She has passed beyond our reach._ So said Mycroft; but what did he know? Mycroft's hypothesis was that Eurus had deliberately achieved permanent solipsism, as a means of protecting humanity in general and Sherlock in particular from her psychotic desires. Mycroft found this narrative comforting; it allowed him to believe both that Eurus had somehow, at least for a moment, embraced the light, and that he was nevertheless right to incarcerate her. If she had in fact turned inward in some complete and irreversible way, what did it matter that she spent her days confined, alone, to an empty concrete cell which offered neither intellectual nor sensory stimulation? 

He, Sherlock, did not believe in Mycroft's narrative; and yet he had been unable to construct a satisfactory alternative. His visits to Sherrinford were stimulating but frustrating. She was an inspired musician--sensitive, intense, and inuitive, yet capable also of executing with a cold and mathematical precision which seemed almost supernaturally passionless. But though he was becoming more familiar with her technique and her repertoire, he felt no closer to a working understanding of her. Mycroft had told him that Eurus was responsible for everything he was. In Eurus, therefore, lay the secrets he sought to his own unyielding mysteries. Chief among them, he presumed, the source of this new estrangement between himself and John. 

Sherlock threw himself into his own chair. The black bag he had selected for the trip sat opposite, in the chair where John should be. He looked at its gaping, empty, unzipped mouth. He'd been unable to fill it. He knew he was bringing the violin; and he knew nothing else about what he wanted or needed to take with him to that place. 

It was his own fault, of course. As always. John had insisted that Sherlock was not, in the end, responsible for Mary's death; but Sherlock still couldn't shake the feeling that he had caused it. Nor could he forget Mary's dying gasp, or the hideous birth of John's terrifying grief. He had gone down there to confront Vivian Norbury. He had been so certain of how it would go. He had been wrong. And Mary died.

He'd killed a man in cold blood. For her. And now it was all for nothing.

Sherlock lay back in his chair, eyes closed, trying to exhale whatever it was that was increasing his heartbeat. It was perfectly understandable, after all, that John wanted nothing further to do with Sherlock. Or with his calculating machine of a brother. Or with his psychopathic sister, who had thought John was such fun to play with. John had come out of that well shuddering all over, blue-lipped, teeth chattering. Wet from head to toe, ankles rubbed raw by his rusty chains. He looked like someone's miserable abused pet. And to Eurus, he supposed, that's what he was. 

He heard footsteps outside the door to the flat. Then he heard knocking.

It was a quarter to six a. m. on Christmas Day. 

Sherlock sprang silently out of the chair and began searching for the gun, which he had last seen on the mantlepiece.

"Sherlock, it's me."

That was John's voice, from the other side of the door. Sherlock knew that, even before the involuntary shiver had passed through him. Sherlock gave himself a bit of a shake, hoping to dispel that reflex, and then walked slowly back to the door.

He reached for the handle, but then stopped. To the blank and closed door, he said, "What's the matter, did you lose your keys?"

There was a pause. Then John's voice, again. "Sherlock, can I come in please?"

Sherlock grasped the handle and opened the door. John stood there, in his leather jacket, looking haunted.

It was as if they hadn't seen each other in years. And yet, apart from the dozens of tiny alterations in his clothing and appearance that always presented themselves at each new encounter, Sherlock could detect no major changes in John. True, he had not slept well the previous night, but that was nothing unusual. The gun he was concealing under his leather jacket in its underarm holster was interesting to note, but Sherlock could not at the moment deduce its purpose.

A sudden chill, followed by a churning in the stomach, told Sherlock that his body had made its own deduction. Sherlock's brain instantly rejected his body's conclusion as erroneous. John was far more careful about what he did with his gun than he was about what he did with his fists.

"Of course," Sherlock said, stepping back into the flat.

"I found a sitter after all," John said, walking in. John looked at his old chair, saw the open travel bag, turned around. 

"When does the helicopter leave?" John asked him, hands in his jacket pockets.

Sherlock felt an unpleasant thrill of surprise. "What helicopter?"

"The one Mycroft's sending to take you to Sherrinford today. When does it leave?"

It would be important to work out how John had deduced that. But right now, Sherlock was more interested in trying to understand the expression on John's face. It was entirely new, and not close enough to anything he could pull up as a reference.

"Half nine," Sherlock finally admitted.

They both stood still, separate, staring at the travel bag.

"I would like to come with you," John said.

All the hair on Sherlock's arms prickled. He had been having these little physiological responses, at odd times, when the thought of Eurus or Sherrinford or the well would suggest itself. 

"No," Sherlock said, as he felt his core temperature rise uncomfortably.

"Why not?"

"It's too dangerous for you."

"Then it's too dangerous for you," John responded.

Sherlock shook his head. He walked toward the mantelpiece in hopes of hiding his own face, which was not entirely under his own control. 

"You don't have to guard me, John. I won't be in danger. She doesn't want to hurt me."

John's voice, when Sherlock next heard it, was surprisingly gentle.

"She will," he said.

Sherlock spun around, angry. "This is a family matter, John. It's not your business."

John nodded toward Sherlock's chair. "You sat right there, Sherlock, and you told Mycroft that I was family," John said. "It was true then and it's true now. If Eurus is your family then she's my family. I want to be with my family on Christmas Day."

This was truly alarming. Unless Sherlock's perceptions were misleading him--and he didn't think they were--John was barely holding back tears.

"But it's up to you," John said, swallowing hard. "Whether _you_ want me with you. Danger aside. Will it be better, for you, if I'm there with you?"

Sherlock had to fight to stop himself from saying the first response that occurred to him.  _It's always better with you._

"I suppose so," was what he finally said.

"Can I come along, then?" John repeated, looking at him warily.

"Yes. Yes, if you wish to, certainly."

John's shoulders dropped. His torso settled into its usual relaxed posture. He exhaled, slowly. Sherlock removed the bag from John's chair. John dropped into it. Sherlock looked at his own chair, felt suddenly disinclined to occupy it, turned back to John.

"Tea?" Sherlock suggested.

John pushed himself out of the chair. "I'll make it."

As soon as John had passed into the kitchen, Sherlock sank into his own chair. He looked, with some disbelief, at his own hands on the armrests. They were, subtly but unmistakeably, trembling. 

 _Stop,_ Sherlock's mind ordered them.  _Stop doing this._

He was still trying to will them into submission when John came back with the tray. Sherlock stuck his hands in his dressing gown pockets. He tried to look bored. John poured out the tea and handed Sherlock his cup and saucer.

It was so unfair. So much of him had been wanting this, all along. For John to just appear on the doorstep, without being asked for or called. And now, he couldn't hold a teacup for more than three seconds without giving away this unasked for and uncontrollable anxiety. 

John watched Sherlock take a hurried, burning sip and then set the teacup down as fast as he could.

"Your hands are shaking," John observed.

"What?" Sherlock said, trying to smile nonchalantly. 

"Do you know why?" John said. "Because I do."

"I didn't realize this was a _professional_ call," Sherlock said, bitterly.

"Sherlock, I'm sorry I hit you. I'm sorry I knocked you down and kicked you. I'm sorry I put you in the hospital. I'm sorry about all of it."

Something in the sound of John's voice made Sherlock's throat constrict. Sherlock looked for a smart answer but could find none. His brain seemed to have lost power for a moment.

"John..."

They both waited. Nothing came. That was evidently the only syllable Sherlock's brain was capable of emitting at the moment.

"Now I could tell you that I'll never hurt you again," John said, "and _you_ might believe it but your body wouldn't. You should listen to your body, Sherlock, it's smarter than your brain."

"I don't know--what you're--"

Sherlock's chest heaved. John laid each of his hands along one of the upholstered armrests, as if he were deliberately setting them down in plain sight.

"It's pretty common for abusers to apologize after an assault," John said, in an aggravatingly clinical tone of voice. "And promise never to do it again. But then again my father never apologized. In a way, it was the most honest thing about him. He wan't sorry and he wouldn't say so. Well, I _am_ sorry, Sherlock. I--ever since it happened. Since--. Since looking at you in the hospital bed and wanting to kill whoever had done this to you and then remembering it was me. Ever since, I've been sorry, and sick, and terrified that if I ever spoke of it again it would be the last conversation we ever had. Maybe it will be. I don't know. But--I'm sorry. It was unforgivable what I did. I'm not asking you to forgive me. I just want you to know that I'm sorry. And that I'm sorry it's taken me this many weeks of being a _dick_ to tell you that."

The tears that were coming to his own eyes were, Sherlock was sure, tears of anger. He knew what he wanted to say and his stupid throat just would not let it come out.

"It wasn't your fault," Sherlock finally gasped. 

John's head drew back. "I punched you in the head and threw you against a wall and kicked you after you fell. I gave you a concussion and I broke three of your ribs. I nearly ruptured your spleen. How was any of that not my fault?"

"I knew you would--I--I planned it that way," Sherlock forced out, while his stomach lurched. "I made you do it. It was part of the plan from the beginning, to get me into the hospital overnight so Smith would be caught trying to murder me. It was the only way we would get him. I knew exactly what you would do if I--when I--"

"No," said John, quietly but firmly. "You did not _make_ me do this."

"But--"

"You didn't  _know_ what I would do in that situation," John said, and now he was sitting up and leaning in. "You made _inferences_ about that based on what you knew about my past behavior. You  _anticipated_ my response. But that doesn't mean you  _made me do it._  I could have acted differently. I didn't. Just the way you could have thrown Mary's DVD in the trash and thought no more about it. And you didn't."

"She was right. It worked."

"She was wrong and it did not work, Sherlock, but that's not what I'm here to talk about. What I mean is that just because you're smarter and you know more and you make more devious plans, that doesn't mean you control me."

"Oh yes it does," Sherlock retorted.

John's fingers dug a bit deeper into the upholstery of his armchair. He was deliberately stopping himself from leaping out of it.

"No," John said. "I've been telling myself all along that I'm just here to serve you. Here to carry out your orders, here to protect you, here to keep you away from your drugs and from the press and from Scotland Yard and from the bullets and bombs and ropes and knives. Just doing what I would do for any good commander. Just being your soldier. I even said that to you at Sherrinford. We're soldiers today."

Indeed, Sherlock heard him saying it again, at that moment. Saw his face hovering in the darkness as John reached down to give him a hand up from among the wreckage of that little coffin.

"I never wanted to be a soldier," John said, with an almost childlike distress. "I wanted to be a doctor. Always. But...that's not even what it means, to be a soldier. Doing what you're told, not thinking about what that will do to you, not thinking about what that will do to other people, because obeying is what feels good. That's not being a soldier at all. That's something else."

John raised one hand, then self-consciously returned it to the armchair. Sherlock felt, with dread, and answering rise and fall of the tension in his chest.

"You think you tricked me into beating you. You think it was part of your grand plan. Well, _I did it,_ Sherlock. _I_ did it all to you with _my hands_. That was _me_. And until you accept that this is my fault we won't--we can't--"

John gestured in the air between them, hands moving back and forth. Sherlock had to blink tears out of his own eyes before he could be sure that he was really seeing them in John's.

"That's what your body is telling you now," John said. "That's what it's been telling you every time you see me, ever since that happened. Listen to it."

Sherlock shook his head. He raised a hand to try to push away what he couldn't argue away.

"I moan and bitch a bit but in the end I've always done what you wanted me to do," John said. "Because I loved you and I wanted you to love me." 

That was the most terrifying sentence of this terrifying conversation. So far.

"Well, no more," John continued. "I do love you. But we both need for me to find some new ways of doing that."

They sat, looking at each other, listening to each other's breathing. Each frozen in his chair, like the prince in that Narnia book.

"I--" Sherlock began. The other two words would not form. Sherlock thought, from the look on John's face, that he might have been able to hear them dying.

"I don't know what to say," Sherlock finally whispered. A lump in his throat still blocked his voice. "I don't know what we do next."

"Next, we go to Sherrinford," John said.

"Why?" Sherlock demanded, as he began to feel slightly more normal. "Why do you  _really_ want to come with me?"

John stood up.

"Because I have solved the mysterious case of Eurus Holmes," he said. "And you need to know what I know. But I can't tell you about any of it until we're in front of her." 

John looked so proud of himself, it made Sherlock want to laugh. He couldn't, yet.

"You've solved a mystery I didn't know existed," Sherlock said.

"I have."

"On your own."

"Without you, anyhow."

"So this is what we do next," Sherlock said. "You solve cases and I come along as backup and then write them up on my blog?"

"For the moment," John said.

Sherlock looked at him. His hands were steady. His stomach was quiet. Nothing was prickling or curling up or shaking.

"I'll go pack then," Sherlock said.

"Good idea."

Sherlock snatched up the bag and brought it into the bedroom. He knew what he needed to bring now. 

***

"Well," said Mycroft, looking at John the way a very high-toned butler might look at a spot of grease on the dining room tablecloth. "I have secured permission. It is of course highly irregular," he continued, as the three of them filed into the lift that would take them up to Eurus's holding area. "Sherrinford typically has a very strict 'No Pets' policy."

Mycroft faced front, and the lift doors closed. John glanced at Sherlock and rolled his eyes. Sherlock glanced down at John's left hand. Which, John realized as he followed Sherlock's gaze, was trembling. Sherlock's right hand, dangling a few inches away, was also trembling.

John directed his eyes to the back of Mycroft's head and took a deep breath.

He felt Sherlock's hand close on his own.

Sherlock's hand was warm--perhaps a bit too warm--and though Sherlock's grip was firm, his skin was soft. Before he could think about it, John returned the pressure, fingers interlinked, palm to palm. He kept his eyes front. He gave no outward sign of the thrill traveling along his nerves, that was somehow upsetting and steadying at the same time.

The doors hissed open. Sherlock dropped his hand. John heard him shifting the weight of the traveling bag in the other. 

Mycroft led the way, striding confidently but without haste toward the three-paned sheet of glass that bisected the concrete enclosure. Eurus stood behind the center pane, hands at her sides, doing her best Hannibal Lecter. The glass was in fact up. John glanced at Sherlock and saw him checking the same thing.

"Merry Christmas, little sister," said Mycroft, carelessly. "I've brought you visitors. Sherlock, of course..."

Eurus looked in Sherlock's direction and smiled.

"...and for reasons no one is willing to explain, Dr. Watson insisted on coming."

"Mycroft," Sherlock objected.

Eurus didn't even look at him. She turned and went back to the bed. The violin was resting on top of the bedclothes. She reached for it.

"Before your performance begins," John cut in. "I'd like a word."

Mycroft turned back toward John with a look of disdain. "Eurus no longer speaks."

"I'm not asking her to speak," John said. "I just want her to listen to what I have to say. After I've said it, I'll be happy to leave. By helicopter, or you can throw me from the parapets and make me swim home. I don't much care."

John stepped past the white line. Ignoring Mycroft and Sherlock's very similar gasps, he came right up to the glass of the center pane.

"Look at me," John said.

Eurus straightened up, violin and bow in hand, back still turned toward John and the glass.

"Or don't," John sighed, resigned. "Either way. I'm only here to tell you this: You're in the wrong place."

Eurus spun around, hair flying, eyes suddenly mad. 

"Doctor Watson, I'll have to ask you to--" Mycroft began.

"No," Sherlock cut in. John couldn't see either of them, except as reflections in the glass. They were standing behind him, Mycroft in the pane on his left, Sherlock in the pane on his right. Hard to judge their ghostly expressions; but Sherlock's voice seemed firm enough. Trustworthy enough.

"Go on, John," said Sherlock. "State the case."

"I'm not a detective," John said, calmly. "It doesn't run in our family. But I've been thinking it over lately, and...there are so many things about you that don't add up. Starting with the fact that Sherlock, the man who couldn't forget what he had for breakfast seventeen days ago even if he tried, has no memory of you."

Eurus gave him no reaction. Mycroft huffed, and said, "I thought I explained--"

"Yes, you said Sherlock repressed or altered all of his memories of Eurus. I say that's bollocks."

Mycroft cleared his throat. John reached backward, in Mycroft's general direction, to hold up a warning hand.

"Don't speak while I'm speaking, Mycroft." He heard Sherlock laugh softly. Eurus raised a sardonic eyebrow. "Sherlock, since Eurus stopped speaking to you, have any more memories of her from your childhood surfaced?"

"No," Sherlock replied, promptly.

"So it's as I thought," John said. "The memories that you've suggested to him, he now believes he has. But those are his only childhood memories of you--or of the fact that he had a sister," John said, glaring at her. "He didn't repress or alter his authentic memories of you. He HAS no authentic memories of you. The reason he doesn't remember you, Eurus," he said, glaring at her, "is that you were not actually there."

Eurus laughed and turned away. John kept his eyes on her as she began circling the cell.

"MUST we listen to this feeble--" Mycroft protested.

"Shut up, Mycroft," Sherlock replied.

"Yes, shut up, Mycroft," John echoed. "I regret not having said that earlier and more often. Because Mycroft is in fact the sole source for everything we think we know about you, Eurus. Mummy and Daddy Holmes came along later to claim--"

"CLAIM?" Mycroft demanded. John saw Mycroft's spectral silhouette turn toward Sherlock's. "Are you REALLY let this...goldfish...impugn the honesty of your own parents?"

Sherlock said, after a cold silence, "Please continue, John."

"As I said, Mummy and Daddy confirmed Eurus's childhood existence; but they didn't know any more than what Mycroft had already told us. And think about it, Sherlock," John went on, unable to keep his voice entirely neutral. "If your parents really believed that Eurus had died tragically in a fire, why did they never speak of her to you? Why didn't they want you and Mycroft to remember her? Why weren't there any photos of her in your house?"

"They were ashamed--" Mycroft began.

"They didn't act ashamed of her," Sherlock cut him off. "Not when you told them Eurus was still alive. In front of me. In a highly emotionally charged scene which you staged, possibly--John would seem to be suggesting--purely for my benefit."

"That's what I'm suggesting," John agreed. "And before either of you asks me why your parents would lie about the death of their own child, let me remind you that they lied to _me_ for two years about Sherlock's 'death,' on Mycroft's orders."

"That was necessary," said Mycroft.

"I'm sure this was necessary too," John replied. "At least I'm sure you convinced your parents that it was."

John wanted to risk a glance back, but he found he was afraid to take his eyes off Eurus. She had reached the far side of the cell, and was leaning against it with her arms folded, fixing him with what Shakespeare used to call a lean and hungry look.

"But it isn't just the family history that doesn't pass the smell test," John went on. "Take Sherrinford itself, for instance. Almost nothing about this place makes sense. If it's an asylum for the criminally insane, why is Eurus the only inmate?"

"There are four hundred and--" Mycroft began.

"I've never seen any of them," John shot back. "Have you, Sherlock?"

"No," Sherlock replied. 

"And those torture rooms you forced us through," John said, directing his anger through the glass at Eurus and her sociopath's smirk. "No one in his right mind would design a maximum security facility that way. Why is this cell entered via recessed sliding doors that don't require so much as a key card reader? Why is this cell surrounded by an apparently infinite suite of empty rooms, some with unprotected plate-glass windows, all communicating with each other?"

"Sherrinford usessecurity measures more sophisticated than any you would recognize," Mycroft said, loftily.

"So say you, Mycroft," John returned, "and again I say: bollocks."

Eurus almost laughed. She looked, in spite of her posture of refusal, as if she might be taking an interest.

"And even if you had taken over the asylum. How was it, given that this place is what it is and where it is, that you were able to shuttle yourself so effortlessly between here and London over a period of several weeks? Who put their fleet of helicopters at your disposal? Where were you storing your wigs and costumes?"

"Doctor Watson, you must stop this. You must accept that you simply have no concept of the powers of a truly superior mind like Eurus's."

"All right then," John shouted, still facing the glass, looking Mycroft right in the reflection. "Let's talk about Eurus's truly superior mind. Specifically, let's talk about Eurus's powers of mind control and the mysterious matter of my immunity to them."

Mycroft groaned. Sherlock said, "Go on."

"According to you, Mycroft, Eurus can mentally enslave any other human being by talking to that person for five minutes. And yet somehow, while posing as my therapist, week after week, Eurus failed to take control of MY mind, which I'm sure all members of the Holmes family present will agree is not in any way unusual. Nor, did she take control of Sherlock's mind, or Mycroft's. In fact I don't see that she took control of ANYONE's mind apart from the prison governor's. And I have my doubts about him."

"Your skepticism is amusing, but entirely mistaken," Mycroft said, drily. "This interview is at an end. Come, Sherlock--"

"NO," Sherlock said. "You stay here and you listen to him for as long as he wants to talk. Just as you did when you were pretending to befriend him."

"I  _thought_ the governor blew his own head off," said John. "But I never did examine the body. It was all quite messy, and the lighting was poor, and we were hustled very quickly along to the next attraction. And even if I'd taken his pulse and found none, that wouldn't have proved anything. Would it, Sherlock?"

"No," said Sherlock, hollowly.

"We saw the governor's wife's death on video," John replied. "It could have been staged and pre-recorded for all we know. As for the Garridebs, I don't see how they could have survived that drop. But one of them WAS a murderer, after all, and she probably didn't tell Mycroft she was planning to drop the _other_ two as well."

Sherlock's head turned toward Mycroft's. 

"Victor Trevor was real," Mycroft insisted. "You remember Victor, Sherlock. You remember his disappearance."

"I do," said Sherlock. 

"And so does the wayback machine," John added. He was not enjoying any of what this was doing to Sherlock, but he couldn't help but feel a little warmed by the disintegration of Mycroft's smugness. "Victor Trevor's disappearance did create quite a stir locally, especially given that his body was never found. But it is interesting that none of these accounts, though they quite often refer to the eccentric Holmes family, ever mention a Holmes daughter. A child doesn't have to be murdered to find himself at the bottom of a well with no way out. It could easily happen by accident, while he was out exploring. The bones I found in that well may belong to Victor Trevor, or they may belong to some other child who went missing even longer ago. I don't know what happened to Victor Trevor. All I know is that Eurus didn't kill him, because Eurus wasn't there."

"You have no proof of that," Mycroft insisted.

"No," John said, finally turning to look at Mycroft. "But you do. You know good and well Eurus isn't your sister. You've always known. You let us believe what she told me about being your sister, and you played along, and you're a very clever boy so you made it a very convincing game. And all the time I'm sure you were telling yourself that this was what you had to do to keep your little brother safe from the very, very dangerous lady who had decided to make him her favorite toy."

Mycroft's face did seem to be showing, perhaps, some traces of a distant emotion. John thought it better not to look at Sherlock's at this time.

"A map reference for hell," John said to him. "That's what you told us Sherrinford is. And the place does look like a medieval dungeon. But the earliest image of it that I've been able to find online is from 2010." 

John swung back around. Eurus was now standing close to the glass, arms folded. She had lost the mad look in her eyes and the blankness of her expression. The gaze that reached him through the glass seemed, instead, ironic. Cynical even.

"Mycroft is the best fixer this government has ever had," John said. "That's partly because he's a genius, and partly because he's naturally secretive. But it's also partly because he is...how shall I put it...open to extreme possibilities. If Britain was menaced by some hitherto unknown threat from the beyond, something paranormal or alien or just not entirely conformable to the laws of physics, Mycroft's the person they'd go to. And he'd do what he always does with the threats he's asked to contain. Manage it. Keep it under wraps, try to learn from it, give it enough treats to secure its cooperation. And if this threat was very clever, and was used to playing the long game, this threat might persuade Mycroft to have a lot of ideas that Mycroft might believe were his own. Mycroft might reach a compromise with this threat regarding its freedom of movement. Mycroft might create paper and electron trails, might requisition people and materials, to make a sham prison out of something that's not a prison at all, and to persuade this threat to spend _most_ of its time within it."

"Sherlock, please listen to me," Mycroft said, urgently. "This is all becoming very dangerous. This conversation has already compromised the security of this facility."

"Yes, this facility," John said, leaning carelessly with one hand against the glass. "A very flexible word, 'facility.' Well, this 'facility' may well be an asylum. But it's definitely not a prison. Any more than this wall that I'm leaning against is really made of glass."

He looked Eurus right in the eyes. She stared back at him, bracing herself. John drew his mobile out of his pocket, and found the number in his contacts. He pressed it, and put the phone on speaker. Sherlock and Mycroft watched him hold it up.

"Hello John," said Harry's voice. "Rosie's fine, she's napping. Everything all right with you?"

"Everything's fine," said John. "Listen, do you know how to get in touch with the Doctor?"

"Yeah, it's an old number but I don't think she ever changes it," Harry replied. 

"Would you please call her," John said, "and tell her that I've found her TARDIS."

Eurus gasped. Sherlock and Mycroft looked at her.

"You found it?" Harry said.

"Not only that, I'm inside it," John said. "Along with Sherlock, and Mycroft...and Missy."

"Oh no," Harry's voice said. 

Eurus smiled. 

"Oh, _yes_ ," Eurus said.

The wall that John had been leaning on disappeared. He tried to catch himself as he fell to the floor; but Eurus knocked him sideways first. He could hear Harry's electronic voice babbling away, and Sherlock and Mycroft's feet scrabbling. There was quite a bit of shouting, and a lot of John being knocked about and trying to knock back. And then there came a moment when, pinned on his back on the cell, with Eurus kneeling on him and her hair hanging down and her enraged and snarling face haloed by the skylight and hoping his death might last long enough to allow Sherlock to escape _._

 _"_ You've been rather a disappointing pet, Redbeard Minor," Eurus said. "I hope you'll make a better entree."

And then the skylight disappeared.

Everything shook. The floor, the walls, the ceiling. A low, regular hum became more and more insistent. John turned his head to see a central column, pulsing with light, sprout unassisted from the white marble floor of the cell. He struggled to get to his feet, fell over, struggled again. Finally, he steadied himself against a metal railing and took a moment to draw breath and get his bearings.

The Doctor was there, by the central console. She had that...wand thing...out and was pointing it at Eurus. Eurus sat on the floor, back against the console, looking up at the Doctor and laughing. Sherlock and Mycroft were, at the edges of the control room, slowly picking themselves up and looking around.

"Where have you BEEN?" said Eurus, in the tones of a petulant child. "It's taken you AGES and AGES and AGES and I've been so BORED here. There's no one worth playing with except for Mycroft and he takes everything _much_ too seriously."

"Did you know, Doctor?" John demanded, because the Holmes brothers were still trying to wrap their brains around the situation. "Did you know, all along, that Eurus was really _your_ secret sister?"

The Doctor shook her head. "I didn't, Watson. I truly didn't. I saw the similarities, but..."

"It's true," said Eurus, sliding into a recumbent position. "The BORING old truth is, the Doctor NEVER recognizes me. One little regeneration and she doesn't know her own best friend from a hole in the ozone. Doesn't even have to be regeneration. I can just put on some stupid DISGUISE, a wig and a forehead or something, and it fools her just as if she were a human. I can't understand it. It's unkind. It's insulting actually. I always know who SHE is, right away."

"Well, I know now," said the Doctor. "And from now on, you are going to leave this place and these people alone."

"Says you," replied Eurus, as she lay back on the TARDIS floor, spreading her white-pajama'd arms out as if she were making a snow angel.

"So Missy stole this thing out from under you on the roof of Bart's," John said. "And then she went back in time, landed on that island, and fixed the chameleon device."

The Doctor sighed. "Actually, River fixed the chameleon device for me, ages ago. I just don't use it. I'm...you know, I'm fond of the place the way it is. But otherwise, yes."

"Sentimental idiot," said Eurus, not unaffectionately. She got to her feet, pulling up on the central console. "Well, this has been lovely, but it's my TARDIS now, and I'll have to ask you all to exit it forthwith. We are of course sailing at the moment through the vaccuum of space; but that won't bother you for long."

Eurus pressed a button on the console. She looked toward the double doors, expectantly. They did not open.

"Since we last met, I've installed a few anti-theft devices," said the Doctor. "They may possibly explain why, once you landed on that rock in the ocean, you couldn't get her moving again. She's not going to respond to your commands, Missy. Or should I call you Eurus?" 

Eurus turned away with a grimace and began pushing buttons. Nothing, in fact, changed.

"What happened to Missy, anyway?" the Doctor asked. "Last I saw you were both abandoning all that is right and good to skive off together in your own TARDIS."

She threw back her head and laughed.

"It was quite funny, actually," Eurus said. "We shot each other in the back."

"And then you _both_ regenerated," the Doctor said.

"Wrong again!" Eurus declared. "Missy got the works, she's gone forever. I made it down to my TARDIS..."

"Where you regenerated into your current form."

Eurus laughed. She sank down to the floor again, lying about, stretching all her limbs and giggling in an unpleasant way that John thought might be starting to seem familiar.

"Oh don't tell me," John said.

"I won't then," said Eurus, to the TARDIS ceiling. "Fine. Regenerated into my current form. Flew back to to Earth where I knew you'd fetch up sooner or later, landed on a desert island where I thought I'd be safe, then found I couldn't take off. Had to amuse myself with the local fauna while waiting for them to develop the necessary technological know-how to help me fix the problem."

Sherlock was sitting on one of the ledges, one leg up and one leg dangling. His dark eyes were trained on Eurus. They flicked suddenly over to Mycroft, who was sitting on another ledge, elbows on knees and head in hands.

"Mycroft?" Sherlock said. "Have you anything to add? Anything you may, perhaps, want to tell me, before I hear it from someone else's arch-nemesis?"

Mycroft raised his head. He looked positively green.

"On second thought, let me," said Sherlock. "Nobody needs a puddle of sick in their...?"

"TARDIS," John said.

"TARDIS. Thank you, John. I think that what you might possibly wish to tell me, Mycroft, is that when you discovered that a medieval dungeon had somehow sprouted on that island overnight, you and your people investigated discreetly. You met with Eurus, discerned immediately that you were up against something more than human, and entered into negotiations. Per the contract you entered into, Eurus would spend  _most_ of her time in her medieval fastness, attended to by an extensive staff. In return for staying out of Britannia's business and not making any overt attempts at world domination, you would undertake to work on her engineering problem and to keep her supplied with tea and witty conversation. When she discovered that you had a younger brother--"

"Younger AND prettier," Eurus called over, raising a finger to emphasize the importance of this point.

"A. Younger. Brother," Sherlock insisted, fixing Eurus with a murderous glare. "Eurus realized immediately that she had found your pressure point, and began entertaining herself by playing with it. She slipped out of her castle keep to stalk John in various guises, then to stalk me as Faith. You didn't like it, but you couldn't prevent her; something in the contract, no doubt. But you also decided you couldn't tell me or John what was really going on. When Eurus offered John the 'sister' cover story, you realized it would provide you with a means of warning me about Eurus without letting me in on the secret. Having enjoyed the little charade we invented for you entirely too much, you had the brainstorm of containing Eurus's walkabouts by actually bringing both me and John _to her,_ where she could play with us without anyone knowing. We thought that visiting Sherrinford was our idea; but of course that was you, Mycroft. You and Eurus had agreed on ground rules beforehand, one of which was that you would be with us at all times to see to it that Eurus didn't play too rough. The prison governor was an unfortunate colleague who was somehow persuaded to--"

Mycroft finally interrupted. "His death was faked. The gun was loaded with paint pellets."

"No," Sherlock said, his voice hard. "John's been _almost_ entirely brilliant all along, but he was wrong there. If you'd know that, you would have fired it yourself to spare us both some pain. At least that's what I'd like to think."

John felt a little star of warmth burst in his chest, despite everything. Mycroft replaced his head in his hands, with a groan.

"Instead you left that to John," Sherlock said. "Knowing, perhaps, that he couldn't do it. But your confederate hadn't been fully briefed, had he?"

"No," Mycroft said miserably. 

"He really thought he'd be faking it. Whereas you knew he wouldn't be."

"It was supposed to be paint!" Mycroft shouted, flinging his hands wide. "I prepared the gun myself. She had the guns switched out somehow. I saw as soon as Sherlock lifted it that it was the wrong one."

"And the girl on the plane?" Sherlock said. 

"Well of course I knew that was rubbish," said Mycroft.

"And yet you said nothing to either of us."

"I was trying to retain control of the situation," Mycroft insisted. 

"You never _had_ control of the situation!" Sherlock exploded in Mycroft's direction, flinging an accusing hand out at him. "Not for a _moment!_ She said it herself, Mycroft. She wasn't playing with me, the pretty face. YOU were her playmate. She was torturing YOU."

Mycroft turned a horrified face toward Eurus. Eurus looked up at him and laughed.

"Your littermate is right, Mycroft," she said. "Your little brother _is_ boring. He's just like her," said Eurus, pointing at the Doctor. "With his moral code and his scruples and his companion-pet and his  _feelings._ Took me one evening of eating chips by the river to find out what makes  _him_ tick. _You_ , on the other hand," she said, raising herself on her elbow and glancing at Mycroft with a disturbingly come-hither look. " _You_ have potential, if you're properly curated. You could be something more than one of these invertebrates crawling about in the slime generated by the oozing of their own _emotions_."

There was a thud. The humming stopped. The double doors opened. Through them, John saw a dense thicket of meaty, green leaves and curving, eggplant-colored stalks. It quivered a bit, pulsing as if it were breating.

"And here we are," said the Doctor. "Gallupatoria Prime, your new home. Out you pop!"

Eurus pointed to herself with a gesture worthy of Tallulah Bankhead. " _Moi?_ "

"Toi," said the Doctor. "Vas-y. Adieu. No large animals for you to torture, I'm afraid, but you'll enjoy the vegetation. It's sentient."

Eurus sat up. She was beginning to look cross. And a bit frightened.

"You can't do this to me," she said. 

"I can."

"You swore an oath!" Eurus leapt to her feet, and John could see a vein bulging in her pallid neck. "To guard my body for a thousand years!"

"Yes, I did, but you're not  _in_ that body now,  _are_ you?" the Doctor shot back.

"You can't leave me on my own! You don't know what I'll get up to!"

"I have a fair idea," said the Doctor. "Will you leave or shall I escort you? I wouldn't think you'd fancy being dragged out kicking and screaming, but it can be arranged if that's the only exit you're willing to make."

"You really want me out there," Eurus said. "Free to take my revenge on your little human friends, by the millions, forever?"

"It won't be forever," said the Doctor, grimly. "You've seen to that."

Eurus tilted her head, appraising the newly harsh note in the Doctor's voice.

"Missy is the end of you," the Doctor said. "That wasn't my doing. It was yours. I refused to execute you; well, you've executed yourself." The Doctor approached Eurus, and she did not look friendly. "The one time in your miserable life that you were beginning to change. The one version of you that the universe could perhaps have lived with. That _I_ might have been able to live with. You destroyed your best self. So that you could _win_."

"Doctor," John said. "The plants are beginning to...encroach."

Tendrils were snaking in through the open doors. Their progress was, in absolute terms, fairly slow; but it was nevertheless alarming to John.

"Well, you can march your bad self right out of this TARDIS," the Doctor said. "I've put in my time with you and I'm done. The Gallupatorians are very ancient and wise, but their civilization has deteriorated since a plague carried off their Tenders. You'll be the first ambulatory sentient being they've seen in months. Tend them well, and they'll take good care of you. Cross them and they'll turn you into compost."

The Doctor knelt down and lifted the end of one of the dark purple tendrils. She took a turn of it around her wrist, stroking the glossy green leaves, whispering to them.

Eurus took a step backward. 

Not fast enough.

Sherlock and Mycroft both shrieked, in a very similar key. Eurus went bouncing out through the double doors, one tendril wrapped around each of her ankles. She disappeared, rustling, into the thicket. The TARDIS doors closed.

The Doctor returned to the console. John was fairly sure he could see tears shining in her eyes. But she only threw the switch and said, "And home we go!"

That hum filled the air. The TARDIS lifted off.

"221b Baker Street, London, England, Earth, Milky Way, Christmas morning?" said the Doctor.

"Yes," John said.

"Lovely," said the Doctor. "Won't be a moment."

And, in fact, there was another  _thud._

The doors opened. John advanced anxiously and peered out. 

They were in the sitting room at 221b.

"Come on," John said, walking back to Mycroft and taking him by the elbow. "It's over now. We're back."

Sherlock took Mycroft's other elbow. Together they got him on his feet. As John piloted Mycroft out the doors, Sherlock looked back over his shoulder at the Doctor.

"Thank you, Doctor," he said.

"Don't mention it," said the Doctor. "Merry Christmas. Watson, don't forget, your sitter's only available till midnight"

"All right," John said.

The three of them watched the blue box disappear, and listened to the hum fade away.

John poured a still-shaken Mycroft into the client chair. He and Sherlock stood on opposite sides, looking down at the sweat beading on his forehead.

"I'll make you a cup of tea," Sherlock finally said, snatching up the tray. 

Sherlock left for the kitchen. John sat in his own chair.

"How," Mycroft gasped, after a few moments.

"How...?"

"How did you know?"

John looked at him and smiled.

"I will never tell you."

They sat in silence until Sherlock returned with the tray. Sherlock set it down. He resumed his own chair. 

"All I want to know," Sherlock said, "is whose idea it was to involve Molly Hooper."

"Molly Hooper?" said Mycroft, as if genuinely surprised to hear the name. "Involve her in what?"

"Your little game with Eurus."

"Oh, that," said Mycroft airily. "Well, as a matter of fact, I suggested it. It was one of my more successful gambits. Molly was never in any physical danger, and there was no great harm done."

John sighed. Sherlock's eyes burned brighter.

"Mummy was right," he said. "You are VERY limited."

"Sherlock, you must look at the larger picture here," Mycroft said. "You must understand what the stakes--"

"No!" Sherlock roared, leaping from the chair. "I  _don't_ have to understand  _anything_ you tell me. I've spent too much of my life trying to  _understand_ you. I _understood_  your plan to bring down Moriarty's organization, didn't I? And my role in it? And John's? And you said the same thing then. You'll be incognito for two years, you can come back to life when it's all over, everyone will be pleased, your reputation will be enormously enhanced, and there will be _no great harm done_. I shouldn't have listened to you then and I'm not going to try to  _understand_ you now. Get out."

Mycroft collected his dignity and rose from the chair, looking down his nose at his younger brother.

"Nevertheless," he said. "One day, I believe you _will_ understand."

John suddenly became restless. Mycroft noticed his movements.

"No need to get up, Doctor Watson," he said. "I'll find my own way out."

Mycroft turned and walked away. The door closed. His footsteps traveled down the stairs, and out through the door to the street.

Sherlock got up and went to the window, just to be sure he was walking away. Then he turned back to John. 

"How _did_ you know?"

"I...can't explain it, Sherlock. It just appears that the Watson family has some type of...special connection with these...timelords."

"You came out here to save me from Eurus," Sherlock said. "And you did it."

John tried out a tentative smile.

"I suppose I did."

"And now what?"

"Well," John said. "It's eleven-thirty in the morning, and my sitter is engaged till midnight. I thought we might...spend Christmas together."

Sherlock's head tilted. The curls above his forehead bobbed, slightly. He put his hands into his trouser pockets.

"Yes," he said. "That...that seems like a good idea. Let me just..."

Extracting his mobile from one pocket, he drifted through the sitting room toward his bedroom, typing away on it.

John watched the dust motes tumble in the cold winter light coming in through the window. He felt no desire to move. He was comfortable, here in this chair. He was content. He was, at this moment, looking into that shaft of light and sinking into the upholstery as he waited for Sherlock to return, happy. 

"Hungry?"

Sherlock appeared, quite suddenly. He'd changed his clothes. He was wearing the same outfit, John noted with a bit of a chill, that he would have chosen for his Christmas visit to Sherrinford ten years in the future. He still had the mobile in one hand.

"Starving," John said. "Where are we going?"

"Angelo's."

"It's closed," John said.

"I know." Sherlock grabbed his coat and put it on. "It's all right. He says I can open it. Just for us. And we have to clean up after."

"You have a key?"

Sherlock looked at him. "I don't  _need_ a key."

"Right," John said. 

Standing up, John felt almost giddy for a moment. He moved toward the door. Sherlock watched him approach, without flinching.

"I've never seen you cook," John said. 

"I don't," Sherlock answered. "But I have highly developed senses of taste and smell, an extensive knowledge of practical chemistry, and years of experience eating at Angelo's. I'm confident that as long as the kitchen is well-stocked, we'll make out all right."

John smiled at him. 

"Well then so am I," he said.

There was one of those pauses. John thought about what to do with it. He remembered their last conversation in that sitting room. He let the pause alone. 

Sherlock opened the door. John led the way down the stairs, out of habit. So many times he'd gone through that door into a crowd of reporters, parting the waves for Sherlock to come through. There was nothing out there now but the cold and a few flurries of snow. That was fine. It was all fine. Whatever happened, from here on in, it would be fine.

END CHAPTER

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're still in the canon timeline. The older Harry in this chapter is from the timeline established in "Law Like Love," shortly after the conclusion of "Prior Engagements."


	8. THE CHIMES

Through the window of Angelo's storefront, John could see the afternoon sky shifting from white to that pale shade of lavender peculiar to winter afternoons. The candle Sherlock had stuck in the neck of the chianti bottle had burnt low; white wax spidered down the curved green glass, where it had hardened into stalactites. Sherlock's left hand lay, palm down, on the red and white check tablecloth, within reach. With his right hand, Sherlock was twirling fettucine noodles on a fork. The ball of pasta on the tines grew slowly from an ordinary bite to the size of a chicken drumstick.

"I don't know," John sighed, still looking at Sherlock's unheld left hand. "It all used to be so easy."

Sherlock made a soft noise in his throat which was not precisely a laugh. John looked up at him.

"I mean not easy, it wasn't...you know...ever peaceful, but...you and me, we just..." 

Sherlock stopped twirling. The tines of the fork rested on the plate.

"It just used to...I mean...what happened?"

Sherlock gave his head a little impatient shake. "We know what happened, John. I died."

"But it isn't just--"

"John, I've been listening to you all day. Now you stop and you listen to me."

Sherlock laid down the fork. He brought his hands together in front of his plate and did that finger-steeple thing that set John's teeth on edge.

"You evidently want to talk about unforgivable things today. Well, let's start with the big one."

"I forgave you for that," John said, waving a hand at him.

"Mock executions are considered a form of torture under the Geneva Convention, John."

John blinked. "What--you mean the train car?"

Sherlock nodded.

"I haven't given that a thought in years."

"And yet according to your own logic, your forgiving me cannot possibly be what actually happened in that train car."

"Well, why DID you do that?" John demanded, suddenly angry. "WHY, after--"

"I don't know why!" Sherlock shouted.

John watched Sherlock look away, trying to hide the tears trembling in his eyes.

"There is no...person...who has ever been as important to me as you are," Sherlock said, quietly and unwillingly. "Except for Mycroft."

John waited for Sherlock to look back at him. Eventually, huntedly, he did.

"Understand, a week before the train car, I was being beaten in a Serbian jail cell. I should tell you, because I've never told you this and I don't know if tomorrow you'll still be speaking to me, I was  _absolutely certain_  that I would die in that cell. I didn't know Mycroft was on his way to save me. I thought nobody in the world knew where I was. I couldn't fight back. I could barely lift my head. I couldn't see for the swelling. My sparring partner was not treating me as if I were an object that he had any further use for. I _knew_ that I was going to die. And a little voice in my head said, well, Sherlock, any regrets? And to paraphrase the great American poet Frank Sinatra, yes. I had a few."

Sherlock picked up his fork, looked at the pasta on it as if it had just fallen out of the sky, and said, "Are you enjoying this at all?"

"The pasta?" John asked.

"Yes," Sherlock said, with perfect seriousness.

"I am, actually," John said. "I don't think Harry used to put quite so much white pepper, but it's rather a pleasant kick."

He mentioned her so easily and so casually. And he could now see her, with her thirteen-year-old ponytail, wrapped in their mother's apron, stirring a pot of cream and butter and adding in the grated cheese. While their father was who knows where, and their mother was lying upstairs in bed, crying. It was just as if he had always remembered her.

"You were speaking of your regrets," John prompted.

"Yes. My regrets. Well frankly some of them had to do with that business with the aluminium crutch. But all the others were related to you."

Sherlock began listing them on his fingers.

"In order of their occurrence to me, John, my regrets at that moment were these. Number one: I regret having made John the chief witness of my death. Number two: I regret not telling John of the plan in advance. Number three: I regret not speaking to John when I saw him in the cemetery. Number four: I regret letting Mycroft talk me out of communicating with John, on the sixteen separate occasions on which we discussed it. Number five: I regret telling John that I was a fraud. Number six: I regret that I dosed John at Baskerville. Number seven: I regret that I never fully trusted John. Number eight: I regret, very much, having gone so deep undercover that I will now die alone in pain in this miserable hole without ever seeing John again."

"Sherlock," John said, sadly.

"But then!" Sherlock said, his hands bouncing into the air. "Sudden reversal! Unexpected deus ex Mycroft! No more beatings! I am--how is it Dickens puts it in that terrible novel--recalled to life! Going home! Out of this foul and filthy hole and into my old rooms and my old coat and my new suit and I--I--felt--" Sherlock paused, his hands gesturing with vague impatience, angry with the time it was taking him to put it into words. "Mycroft hadn't changed. Anthea hadn't changed. London hadn't changed, well, not in any way one couldn't have projected. It was--I felt--as if everything had simply been paused, while I was away. As if I could just walk out into that graveyard and say, 'Hello, John,' and pick up right where we left off."

"Oh, good Christ," John murmured, as he felt his body begin to remember how it had felt during that 'pause.'

"I am not one of your--ordinary idiots!" Sherlock cried, as if in pain. "I know things. I'm Sherlock Holmes. I can tell a person things he doesn't even know about his own life just by looking at him. I don't--ask myself--whether I'm wrong. I don't stop to think: well now, Sherlock, could it be that your deductions about how John has been spending the past two years might be incorrect? Could it possibly be that your vast ignorance of the workings of the deeper and more complex human emotions might have led you to miscalculate the effect on John of both your initial death and your miraculous rebirth? Is it just possible that by encouraging you to drop in on John at the moment that he plans to propose to his new girlfriend, Mycroft might be indulging his peculiar sense of humor, which has never been fully indistinguishable from a certain ironic detachment which to those who know him less well might seem to border on the malicious?"

"No, it's clear you didn't," John said. He put his own hands on the table, one on either side of his plate, where he could see them.

"I did not--know--you said--" John was becoming slightly alarmed, from a medical point of view, at how much difficulty Sherlock seemed to have finding the breath he needed to go on. "You said--'you let me grieve.' John, I had--I had no idea you were grieving."

"No idea," John said. His voice came out harder than he'd intended.

"I thought--I mean that was why I told you I was a fraud. I thought you wouldn't care any more, after that. I thought that as long as I--as long as you thought I wasn't...you know, 'Sherlock Holmes'...that you wouldn't miss me."

"That is the most ridiculous--" John began.

"John. I. KNOW. I know that NOW, when it's too late to do any good. I didn't know it then, and--I mean of the emotions, I actually do sort of understand grief a bit. Because of Redbeard. And...you know, Rachel. That case. I learned so much from you, just on that one case. And when I thought Irene Adler was dead, that felt a bit...grief-y. And then you told me you'd been...and I...I saw right away, I'd been wrong. About everything. None of the predictions I'd made about how this would go were accurate. And I was trying to...adjust..."

"...and then I tried to strangle you."

Sherlock nodded. "Yes. Understandably."

John shook his head. He squirmed in the chair, pressing his hands flat against the table. 

"What I did to you--"

"Sherlock, if I'd gotten out of that wheelchair in Leinster Gardens and punched Mary in the face, would you have said that was understandable?"

Sherlock's eyes widened slightly in shock. He sat up straighter. 

"John, you would never--"

"This is my POINT!" John said. One of his hands flew free; he returned it to the table. "God, the pair of you, I lie in bed at night sometimes trying to decide which of you has done me the most damage. You both lied to me. You both endangered me. You both died and left me alone. You maybe get more bad points for doing it on purpose but then you came back to me and Mary hasn't, so that evens the score. Well, maybe I should have left her when I found out she'd shot you. Maybe I should have left you when I found out you weren't dead. I'll wager there are alternative timelines in which I've actually done one or both of those things and maybe things are better for both of us there. There's a lot of things I maybe should have done, but instead I went for your throat. And then I did it again. And again."

"You were angry."

"So what? I GET angry, Sherlock, I will BE that angry again, sometime, probably soon, and we can't be--we can't--if I'm just going to DO that every time you make me angry!"

"We can't what?" Sherlock asked.

John slumped in his chair. He felt cold, suddenly. He noticed with disgust the noodles left on his plate, coated in their congealed Alfredo sauce.

"What do you want, John?" Sherlock finally said, quietly. "What is it that you imagine your--anger--is preventing?"

"I've been thinking..." John forced himself to look up and meet Sherlock's eyes. "Just today, you understand. Because it's Christmas and because it's been the strangest day of my life. I've been thinking about...coming back to Baker Street."

Sherlock took a slow breath and held it. The light faded. The streetlamps outside turned on. Half of Sherlock's face receded into shadow. Light traced the curves of the other half, shining briefly in his dark eye.

"Is...is that something..." John stammered.

"Yes," Sherlock said promptly.

"But--"

"You can have your old room at first. And then we'll see."

Now John was the one holding his breath.

"That is what this is about, isn't it?" Sherlock said, with that familiar detachment. "If we're just...detective best mates...then what's a punch or two between friends? But that's not what we're going to be if you come back, is it? And it's not actually what we ever were. And you know that now."

John stared at him.

"Please tell me if I'm wrong, John," Sherlock said, suddenly fearful.

"No. No, you're not wrong. You're--I just--you're not wrong."

Sherlock looked at him. John looked back. He had imagined feeling very different at this moment. More butterflies, perhaps, and less nausea.

"I, too, feel suddenly quite ill," said Sherlock, calmly. "In the many books about human emotion that I have read since my Great Miscalculation, it's often said that one feels this way at pivotal moments. It's the adrenaline, evidently. One perceives the immensity of the risk, precisely because one so desires the change."

Sherlock laid his left hand on the table, palm up. John placed his right hand on top of it, palm down. Their fingers interlocked. Pressed. Tightened on each other.

The sun sank below the line of rooftops on the west side of the street. The candlelight flickered on Sherlock's face. John looked into it and remembered the first time he'd ever come to Angelo's, full of new thoughts and new nerves and new hopes.

"Will you come back to Baker Street?" Sherlock said, solemnly.

"I will," John replied, as if he were at the altar.

"Rosie can share with you, for the time being."

John nodded. His eyes were beginning to sting at the corners. "That's--fine. That's fine. There's room for the crib and she's a good sleeper."

"Is she?" Sherlock said, with genuine interest.

John nodded. The dam chose that moment to burst.

John leaned over the table, still holding onto Sherlock hand, and let it come. The tears, the sobs, the shaking, all of it. He heard Sherlock's chair legs scrape along the floor. He felt Sherlock's arms go round him. He felt Sherlock's chin on his shoulder as Sherlock held him, letting him shake.

"I love you," John cried. 

"I love you too," Sherlock said.

"I loved Mary," John said.

"I know," Sherlock answered.

"I need help," John said.

"We'll find it," Sherlock answered.

You would think you would remember it in more detail, your first kiss. But when he looked back, John couldn't see the moment at which it began. It was just happening, the tears salting the taste of Sherlock's mouth, John's hands shaking against Sherlock's shoulders. John's mind racing at first and then slowing down.  _This. This. This. Hold on to this. Please God can we just hold on to this. Hold on to this forever._

"Can we go home?" John whispered.

Sherlock put his lips against John's ear and whispered back.

"We have to do the dishes first."

"Sounds exciting," John murmured.

Sherlock broke the embrace. He stood up, taking John's hand, and drew him out of the chair. "I promised Angelo. I've been training myself to keep my promises."

John picked up his plate with his free hand. Sherlock collected his own. Hand in hand, balancing cutlery, they slipped through the archway into the darkened kitchen.

*  *  *

Harry looked up from the Times when she heard the familiar hum.

The blue box materialized, slowly, on John's living room carpet. The doors opened, and out stepped the new Doctor. All in all, Harry thought, this regeneration was an improvement. She wasn't beautiful, exactly; but she had a freshness and charm which was both slightly reminiscent of and yet far less annoying than the adolescent puppyings of Bowtie Boy.

"Well, Harry," said the Doctor. "How's your Christmas been?"

Harry pulled out her phone and glanced at it. It was a quarter to midnight.

"It's been nice, actually," Harry said. "I'd forgotten a lot about Rachel at this age. It's, you know, a bit weird; but Rosie still likes all the things Rachel used to like. That'll change one day, I suppose."

"Probably," said the Doctor.

"He's not going to be back by midnight, is he?" Harry said.

"He might," the Doctor answered. "But I thought I'd drop in, just to be on the safe side. I won't...disappear, you know. And I am...not a very good sitter, to be honest, but if the house catches fire I can get her out safely, and at this time of night that's essentially all the job entails, right?"

"Right."

Harry stood up. She put the phone back in her pocket. Staring at the time made her feel queasy.

"So...what happens at midnight?" she said.

"Your alternative will..." the Doctor began.

"No, I mean to John. He wakes up on Boxing Day. Does he remember...all of this? Any of it?"

The Doctor waved a hand. "Oh, yes, he will. You see all of this has actually  _happened_ now, in the current timeline. He'll have all the memories he made over the past 24 hours. So will Sherlock."

"But I will be gone."

"Yes. Well.  _This_ you will be gone. There is a you in  _this_ timeline, you know. Somewhere."

"Probably getting drunk in an apartment in Norwood right now," said Harry grimly.

"Almost certainly. Well. Actually, yes, that is what you are doing, in this timeline, at this moment. I have...been to visit."

"Well, I won't remember that," said Harry.

"No, you won't."

"Thanks anyway," she said.

"I left a note," said the Doctor.

Harry folded her arms. "A note?"

"Yes."

"What does it say?"

The Doctor looked embarrassed.

"It just says...well in point of fact what it says, Harry, is 'You can do this. You already have.' "

Harry smiled, briefly.

"The struggle never ends, does it?" Harry said.

"No."

"Every day. Every fucking day."

"Time is in flux, Harry. It's like that for everything. Nothing is ever really fixed. No story is ever over. Most people just don't realize that, but you're...40 percent me. So you know."

"The other sixty per cent of me gets tired," Harry said.

Harry hoped midnight would strike before she began to cry.

"Oh Harry," said the Doctor. "You can do it. You will do it. You always do."

"It's so hard," Harry said. And now the tears came.

The Doctor stepped forward. She took Harry in her arms. Harry clung to her, weeping.

"It's so hard," she repeated. "Every time. It's so hard."

"You're not alone," the Doctor whispered to her. "Listen to me, I'll keep saying it. Just hold on and listen. You're not alone. You're not alone."

Harry closed her eyes. She listened to the murmur of the Doctor's voice.

In the distance, Harry head a church bell toll once.

"You're not alone," the Doctor repeated.

Two. Three. Four. Five. 

A key rattled in the lock on the front door.

Six.

"Harry, I'm sorry I'm late, I..."

Harry looked up. Over the Doctor's shoulder, she could see John, standing in front of the door, looking stricken.

"I'm in an apartment in Norwood," Harry said, sharply. 

Seven. 

"I'm in the book," she went on.

Eight.

"And I could use some fucking help!"

Nine.

John finally understood. He nodded.

"I'll find you, Harry," John said. "I will. I promise."

Ten.

The Doctor drew back. She looked into Harry's eyes. 

"We have heard the chimes at midnight, Harry," the Doctor said, sadly.

Eleven.

The Doctor drew Harry's head gently toward her own. Their lips met. Their mouths opened. Harry sighed.

Twelve.

THE END

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Right after "The Final Problem" aired, I made a couple of attempts to start a fix-it. I couldn't do it. "Missed Me" was as close as I could get. But now, a year later, I feel like I've finally come up with one, and I guess that gives me closure. It helped that in the middle of it I watched series 10 of Doctor Who and actually enjoyed it. Maybe that's why S4 was so awful; Moffat was putting in more time trying to recapture the things we used to love about the way he wrote for Doctor Who. Or maybe it was Gatiss's fault. I don't know. Either way, thanks for making it through this last instalment in the Wild About Harry series. I hope you enjoyed the chance to look at some of the old stories from a new point of view, and to see Sherlock and John start over, as best they can, after the disasters visited upon them in S3 and S4.


End file.
